
Class 
Book 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



%\>t Bitisfttp of jlature 



v*£ 






T Ht LiBKAkY OF 

1 1903 

ytight Entry 



& 



a, 

I cop y 



Copyright, jgoj 
By L. C. Page & Company 

(incorporated) 



All rights reserved 



Published September, 1903 



GTclonial ^33 

Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co. 
Boston, Mass., U. S. A. 



Contents 



The Art of Life . 






PAGE 

i 


On Being Strenuous 










II 


The Crime of Ugliness 










23 


Miracles and Metaphors 
Haste and Waste 










33 
41 


At the Coming of Spring 
The Vernal Ides . 










5i 
61 


The Seed of Success . 










7i 


Fact and Fancy . 

Easter Eve .... 










81 
9 1 


The Cost of Beauty . 

Rhythm 

April in Town . 

Careless Nature . 










101 
109 
119 
125 


The Wandering Word . 
The Friendship of Nature 
Subconscious Art . 










131 

139 

H5 


Seaboard and Hill ward 










155 


The Courtesy of Nature 
The Luxury of Being Poor 
" Solitary the Thrush " 
Trees .... 










163 

173 
183 

191 



Contents 








PAGE 

The Ritual of Nature . . . „ „ . 201 


Concerning Pride . 
Of Breeding 
Of Serenity 

Play 

The Scarlet of the Year 










21 1 
221 
231 

2 39 
247 


Good Fortune 










263 


The Debauchery of Mood 
Of Moderation . 










271 
281 


Atmosphere .... 










289 



To My Teacher and Friend 
George Robert Parkin 

SINCE you are on the other side of the 
world, my dear Parkin, I must offer you my 
new book without your leave. This is not 
really so venturesome as it may seem. You 
never were one of those aloof and awesome 
Head Masters, who exercise a petty reign of 
terror over the effervescence of youth; and I 
cannot recall that we ever tried to steal a 
march on you, except on a few occasions in the 
history of the school or of your own life, when 
we wished to surprise you with some token of 
our bashful affection. 

When this page comes under that glowing 
eye, which has since compelled so many audi- 
ences, in so many places larger than any 
schoolroom, on weightier matters than any 

v 



aro <&tovQt Mottvt Dartttn 

school discipline, let me ask you to recall those 
occasions long ago, and to think of this prefa- 
tory letter as an echo of that happy time. I 
even feel myself lapsing (or more properly 
stiffening) into the formal style of an address, 
to be read to you, with much stumbling and 
a quaking heart, before the assembled school. 
But I dare say you will find it none the worse 
on that account. As you sit now turning these 
leaves, whether in London or South Africa, 
you must pretend that you are still in the chair 
behind the high desk, where we all came for 
counsel and reproof, and that here is one of 
your boys come to tender you an offering 
long overdue, making acknowledgment of 
most grateful indebtedness never really to be 
repaid. For the service you did him is, next 
to the gift of life, the greatest that one man 
can render another. 

Those were the days when we were all 
young together, whether at Greek or football, 
tramping for Mayflowers through the early 
spring woods, paddling on the river in intoxi- 

vi 



2To i&tavQt Mofcert Jlarltiu 

eating Junes, or snowshoeing across bitter 
drifts in the perishing December wind, — 
always under the leadership of your indomita- 
ble ardour. In that golden age we first real- 
ized the kinship of Nature, whose help is for 
ever unfailing, and whose praise is never out- 
sung. I must remind you, too, of those hours 
in the class-room, when the Mneid was often 
interrupted by the Idyls of the King or 
The Blessed Damozel, and William Morris 
or Arnold or Mr. Swinburne's latest lyric 
came to us between the lines of Horace. 

I shall not fasten upon you the heavy 
responsibility of haying turned more than one 
young scholar aside into the fascinating and 
headlong current of contemporary poetry, 
never to emerge again, nor of having helped 
to make anything so doubtful as a minor bard. 
It is certain, however, that you gave us what- 
ever solace and inspiration there is in the 
classics and in modern letters, and set our 
feet in the devious aisles of the enchanted 
groves of the Muses. And I for one have to 

vii 



2To &tovat 3Ro6ttrt tyutUin 

thank you for a pleasure in life, almost the 
only one, that does not fail. 

We learned from you, or we might have 
learned, to be zealous, to be fair, to be happy 
over our work, to love only what is beautiful 
and of good report, and to follow the truth 
at all hazards. If you find any good, then, 
in these pages, take much of the credit for it 
to yourself, I beg you. And whatever you 
come upon of ill, attribute to that original 
perversity for which our grandsires had to 
make allowance in their theology, and from 
which no master in the world can quite free 
even his most desirous pupil. 

The essays which go to make up this volume 
were written at different times during the past 
six or seven years. In revising them for pub- 
lication in their present form, a good deal 
that was purely ephemeral has been cut away; 
so that while they may not appear to contain 
very much that is of great significance, neither 
will they, I hope, be found altogether trivial. 

Under the circumstances of their produc- 
viii 



2Co i&tQVQt J&otiert $arfetti 

tion, they could scarcely follow any coherent 
and continuous trend of thought. Perhaps, 
indeed, it is not to be expected that a book of 
essays should do this. They can only have 
whatever unity of feeling and outlook attaches 
to the writer's philosophy, as it passes from 
day to day through the changing pageants of 
Nature or through the varied pomps and 
vanities of this delightful world. And yet, if 
I must be my own apologist, perhaps I may 
be excused for assuming that no work of the 
sort, however random and perishable, will be 
entirely futile, if it has been done in the first 
place with loving sincerity and conviction. It 
will have in the final analysis some way of 
locking at life, some tendency or preference, 
which in a more studied work would be more 
formal, but not therefore necessarily more 
true. It may attract only a handful of readers ; 
it may not outlive the hour; but after all, that 
may be enough, if only it carry with it some 
hint of the experience which prompted it. 
A book is only written for him who finds it; 
ix 



&o i&tovQt motttt Jlarftiti 

and should carry to the finder some palpable 
or even intimate revelation of the man who 
made it. It is as if, by a tone of the voice or 
a turn of the head, a stranger should suddenly 
appeal to us as a comrade. And while it is 
true that the offices of friendship are not fully 
accomplished until we have eaten our bushel of 
salt together, it is also certain that the flavour 
of friendship may be recognized with the 
smallest grain. A book may be a cry in the 
night, like Carlyle's; or a message from " the 
god of the wood," like Emerson's; or a song 
of the open, like Whitman's ; or the utterance 
of a scholar like Newman from the schools of 
ancient learning; or it may be no more than 
the smiling salutation of a child in the street. 
Let him receive it whom it may serve. 

It is a long way from the little Canadian 
town on the St. John, in the early seventies, 
to the centres of the world in the beginning 
of a new era ; but it is good to remember and 
to take courage. And while we who always 
must think of you with a touch of hero- 



8To <£eorge Mohtvt ftarttiu 

worship, look on with pride at your achieve- 
ments in that larger workroom of responsi- 
bility to which you have so deservedly come, 
— while we kindle as of old at your unflinch- 
ing and strenuous eagerness, — I hope that 
you will be able to read with satisfaction, and 
with some little pleasure, these latest tasks 
which I bring for your approval. 

School will not keep for ever. By the feel 
of the sun it must be already past noon. Be- 
fore very long the hour must strike for our 
dismissal from this pleasant and airy edifice, 
a summons less welcome than the four o'clock 
cathedral bell in that leafy Northern city in 
old days, and we shall all go scattering forth 
for the Great Re-creation. Before that time 
arrives, only let me know that, in your impar- 
tial and exacting judgment, I have not alto- 
gether failed, and I shall await the Finals 
with more confidence than most mortals dare 
enjoy. 

B. C. 

New York, June, IQOJ. 

xi 



Hty girt of Htfe 



©>e &rt of fife 



We have come to look upon art and life as 
separate things. We have come to think of 
art as a peculiar form of activity practised by 
a very few and enjoyed by a few more. There 
is a tacit belief in the bottom of the mind of 
most of us that art really has not very much 
to do with life. Even those who love art well 
are shaken in their faith at times by the uni- 
versal skepticism around them. They are not 
unwilling to speak deprecatingly of art as a 
cult, to make concessions to the average stand- 
ard of thought; they help to put art farther 
and farther away from life. 

But what is the reason of this divorce of 
art from life? Is it only that we feel the too 
frequent lack of vitality in art? As every- 

3 



&ty Wtintfyip of Ttfatttre 

day people we cannot help seeing that a great 
deal of artistic energy is expended idly away 
from the main issues of life. The original artis- 
tic sin was the conception of art as something 
aloof and exceptional; and when once that 
pernicious poison had entered the human soul, 
naturally there were not a few adherents to 
the sect of the dreamers. Their number in- 
creased; the estrangement between life and art 
grew; the devotees of expression even became 
supercilious and fanatical in their sectarian- 
ism; until to-day the name artist is a syno- 
nym for the impractical bystander, the man of 
inaction, the contemplator of the actual, the 
workman who is a stranger among equals. It 
is nothing new to say that this vicious secession 
of one state of mind from the great republic 
of thought has worked sorry havoc to art 
One sees that only too clearly every day in the 
really slight hold which art has on the public. 
In the days of the blessed innocence of art it 
never occurred to the artist that he was not 
a layman like the rest of his toiling fellows. 

4 



STtje art of a«e 

But if the evil to art was great, the evil to 
life was not less so. The idea that art is some- 
thing that does not quite concern us in our 
every-day affairs, at last breeds the belief that 
in a natural state we should have no need of 
art. The truth is that in a natural state we 
should never know what art means, as distinct 
from life. Art is expression, we say. Very 
well, but nothing we can do or say can possibly 
be done or said without expression, without 
revealing the person behind the action and 
the word. You lift a finger or drop an inflec- 
tion, and the stranger in the room has gathered 
a volume of characteristics of your personality. 
Yet expression is more than this; it is part of 
our work, too. Consider the truth of this 
statement, that nothing we do or say can be 
without expression ; and then see how all trade 
and commerce and manufacture, — the whole 
conduct of civilization, — has its artistic as- 
pect. And because of the original artistic 
sin, the divorce of art from life, we suffer in 
a life without joy. For work, like art, is noth- 

5 



ing but natural function, and the natural joy 
of the one is as great as the natural joy of the 
other; for they are only different aspects of 
the same energy, and not different kinds of 
energy. 

No one ever heard of an artist complaining 
of the tedium of his work. Of course not; for 
him art and work are one ; he tastes the blessed 
joy of a natural inclination having free play. 
He is expressing himself after his kind, as 
nature intended. On the other hand, how 
often does one hear a toiler (as the non-artistic 
worker is called) rejoicing in his work? His 
life is one long complaint. Why? Because 
false conditions and false ideals have so com- 
pletely separated his work from all artistic 
possibility. It has been made impossible for 
him to find any expression for himself in his 
work. The hands must keep their aimless, 
weary energy, while the soul is stifled for an 
outlet. 

" The heart in the work " is not a motto for 
the artist alone; it is for the labourer as well. 

6 



©ft* art of JLitt 

With that possibility before him, the meanest 
toiler may grow beautiful; without it, the 
veriest giant of energy will grow petty and 
warped and sad. The commonest work is 
ennobling when it provides any avenue of ex- 
pression for the spirit, any exit for the heavy, 
struggling, ambitious human heart out of its 
prison house of silence into the sunshine of fel- 
lowship. Set me a task in which I can put 
something of my very self, and it is task no 
longer; it is a joy; it is art. 

To make such a condition of work universal 
seems to me a sufficient aim for modern en- 
deavour. How soon things would cease to be 
ugly and become beautiful, if only every 
stroke of work in the world had some expres- 
sion in it! Of course, we cannot have that 
under existing conditions. Any improvement 
of society in that direction implies a cure more 
radical than has yet been attempted. It im- 
plies freedom for the common worker as well 
as freedom for the thinker and artist. Not 
until the term artisan has come to be as hon- 

7 



ourable as the term artist will we have real 
freedom. But I am afraid that with all our 
talk of freedom very few of us believe in it, 
after all. We seem to think it is dangerous. 
But freedom is not an acquisition of power; 
it is merely the disimprisonment of spirit. 
And not to believe in freedom is to believe in 
the ultimate evil of the spirit. For if the good 
is stronger than the bad, the less repression 
we have the better. Since it is impossible to 
discriminate between them, we can only un- 
lock the doors and call forth every human 
energy, — give it opportunity, give it work 
in which there is some chance for expression, 
— believing that the better powers will tri- 
umph over the worse. 

The art of life, then, is to make life and art 
one, so far as we can, for ourselves and for 
others, — to find, if possible, the occupation 
in which we can put something of self. So 
should gladness and content come back to 
earth. But now, with the body made a slave 
to machinery, and the spirit defrauded of any 

8 



©tie &rt of UiU 

scope for its pent-up force, we have nothing 
to hope for in the industrial world; and the 
breach between art and life will go on widen- 
ing until labour is utterly brutalized and art 
utterly emasculated. 



<&n Being Strenuous 



©n JStittj Strenuous 



In Lafcadio Hearn's book, " In Ghostly 
Japan," there is a remarkable chapter on silk- 
worms. 

" In Numi's neighbourhood, where there 
are plenty of mulberry-trees, many families 
keep silkworms. ... It is curious to see hun- 
dreds of caterpillars feeding all together in 
one tray, and to hear the soft, papery noise 
which they make while gnawing their mul- 
berry leaves. A, they approach maturity the 
creatures need almost constant attention. At 
brief intervals some expert visits each tray to 
inspect progress, picks up the plumpest feed- 
ers, and decides by gently rolling them between 
his forefinger and thumb, which are ready to 

i3 



Qfyt mfnsinjj of Katttre 

spin. ... A few only of the best are suffered 
to emerge from their silky sleep — the selected 
breeders. They have beautiful wings, but can- 
not use them. They have mouths, but do not 
eat. They only pair, lay eggs, and die. For 
thousands of years their race has been so well 
cared for that it can no longer take care of 
itself." 

The moral to be deduced from this instance 
is obvious. Compare with the silkworms our 
mortal selves. These happy grubs are tended 
by a kindly boy, who supplies their every 
need; they have not a wish unsatisfied. By a 
sort of miracle, a supernatural power (as it 
would seem to them) , they have been removed 
from the field of competition. For them the 
struggle for existence no longer exists. One 
imagines that if they were capable of prayer 
they could ask no more perfect gift than that 
which has been bestowed upon them — im- 
munity from strife and security in the com- 
forts of existence. What more do we our- 
selves ask? Our prayer is almost never that 

14 



©n Mtina Strrmtims 

we may persist, endure, and overcome, but 
rather that we may be removed by a kindly 
providence from the region of struggle to 
some benign sphere where all the delights of 
life may fall to our lot without an effort. 

It is probably an idle and wicked dream. 
Witness the case of the silkworms. If you 
would form some notion of what the imagined 
heaven might do for us, consider the case of 
our small friends among the mulberry leaves. 
When we think of the lilies of the field, and 
promise ourselves a state like theirs according 
to the word, " Shall He not much more clothe 
you, O ye of little faith?" we are prone to 
forget that every moment of their life for 
untold ages has been filled with a strenuous 
purpose, quiet and unperceived, yet none the 
less strong on that account. Yes, we may have 
the motive and the vesture of our little sisters 
of the field, but we must have their tenacity 
and their indomitable endurance as well. To 
cease to strive is to begin to degenerate. As 
Mr. Hearn says: 

*5 



®Jje !&i\w\)\® of TSTatttttt 

" An early stage of that degeneration would 
be represented by total incapacity to help our- 
selves — then we should begin to lose the use 
of our higher sense organs — later on, the 
brain would shrink to a vanishing pin-point of 
matter; still later we should dwindle into 
mere amorphous sacs, mere blind stomachs. 
Such would be the physical consequence of 
that kind of divine love which we so lazily 
wish for. The longing for perpetual bliss and 
perpetual peace might well seem a malevolent 
inspiration from the lords of death and dark- 
ness." 

Then follow these memorable sentences: 
" All life that feels and thinks has been, and 
can continue to be, only as the product of 
struggle and pain — only as the outcome of 
endless battle with the Powers of the Universe. 
And cosmic law is uncompromising. What- 
ever organ ceases to know pain — whatever 
faculty ceases to be used under the stimulus of 
pain — must also cease to exist. Let pain and 
its effort be suspended, and life must shrink 

16 



©n Stfus Stremtotta 

back, first into protoplastic shapelessness, 
thereafter into dust." 

Then we turn to a modern poet, and read: 

" Calm soul of all things ! make it mine 
To feel, amid the city's jar, 
That there abides a peace of thine, 
Man did not make and cannot mar. 

" The will to neither strive nor cry, 

The power to feel with others give ! 
Calm, calm me more ! nor let me die, 
Before I have begun to live." 

How is one to reconcile Arnold's prayer 
for calm with the remorseless law of perpetual 
trial, perpetual endeavour? Is there indeed, 
a peace " man did not make and cannot mar? " 
Is the tremendous strain of modern life, its 
killing excitement, its relentless rush, its 
breathless haste, its eager and ruthless com- 
petition, a part of the inevitable development 
of man's existence? Or should we combat 
these things as temporary aberrations from 
the normal? Shall I serve my hour and gen- 

17 



arije Htusljij) of Mature 

eration best by combating the idea of strife 
and by insisting on peace and repose in my 
own surroundings or by entering heart and 
mind into the race and battle of the strong P 
Certainly I shall best serve my fellows by fol- 
lowing my own conviction in the matter. 
That at least is sure; that at least is the cosmic 
law; to each individual his own ideal and 
the will to follow it. But how to know in 
the first place? How to tell the best ideal 
from the second best? Or is there, perhaps, 
some way of harmonizing both ideals in a 
single line of action? 

In that great pageant of the seasons which 
passes by our door year after year, in the 
myriad changes of the wonderful spectacle 
of this greening and blanching orb, in all the 
processes of that apparition we call Nature, 
do I not see both strife and calm exemplified? 
That " calm soul of all things," which Arnold 
invokes, is really in constant strife. Every 
moment the apparent calm of nature covers a 
relentless battle for existence, tribe against 

t8 



©n litiufl Strenuous 

tribe, species against species; and the price of 
life in unceasing struggle, the whole earth 
groaning and travailing together. So that 
the appearance of calm which settles on the 
face of our mother earth, in the long, slow 
summer afternoon, is in reality but the veil 
and deception of the truth. Is it? Or may 
we think that the unaccounted powers of life 
at play through the world partake of a uni- 
versal peace as well as of a universal strain? 

How is it with ourselves? Is there any man 
who can wholly possess his heart in patience? 
Is there any who must always be striving? Is 
it not rather true that to the most strenuous of 
us there come fleeting moments when calm 
and self-possession seem good? And does 
there live the most confirmed quietist who has 
not at times been roused to action by love or 
patriotism or generous indignation? 

It may very well happen that circumstances 
have placed you in the forefront of the fight, 
where all your splendid life long you shall 
have never a minute to call your own, where 

19 



JJClje mnnffip of Xattttre 

you shall never once be able to rest or meditate 
or sun your spirit in a basking hour of leisure. 
Complain not. This is the fortune of the 
captains of humanity; be glad the good God 
has laid upon you a work as great as your 
powers. The stern struggle and victorious 
achievement can never be cramping to the 
soul. And the vast cisterns of repose may be 
opened to you in another incarnation; indeed 
they were possibly yours long since and from 
them you have derived this burning energy. 

It may be, on the other hand, that inactive 
doubt and timorous incertitude beset me, and 
that I am becoming stale for lack of use. 
Never mind, the hour will one day strike, 
and the lethargic torpor of temperamental in- 
capacity will be broken up, and I shall be 
remoulded into something more trenchant and 
available for the forwarding of beneficent 
designs. 

Meanwhile for both of us, it may be, we 
shall find solace in a wise philosophic blending 
of the two ideals. It is somehow possible, 

20 



©n iirtufl Strenuous 

I think, to be as strenuous and efficient as 
nature herself in action, and yet to have in 
mind always, as a standard of normal being, 
the inflexible serenity of the wheeling sun. 



i\ 



Ci)e Crime of Ugliness 



(W)e Crime of ttjjlmese 



One hardly assents without question to the 
statement that ugliness is a crime. That the 
love of beauty is a pleasure we know, but why 
place it among the moral obligations? Is it 
not straining the use of language a little to 
speak of the morality or immorality of inani- 
mate objects? Beauty is nothing but a condi- 
tion of matter. And how can matter be either 
good or evil? Surely beauty is one of the 
things we may leave outside the pale of ethics! 

Beauty, however, is really only another 
name for goodness, and the maintenance of 
beauty is as much a moral duty as the main- 
tenance of goodness. And I come to believe 
this in the. following way: 

I perceive that we call things beautiful 
2 5 



W§t mnuWv of Mature 

which are most pleasing to our senses at their 
best, just as we call things good which are 
most satisfying to our emotional nature at its 
best, and still other things true which con- 
form to the requirements of our mental nature. 
You may, if you wish, say that we have a 
special faculty for the apprehension of truth, 
which we call reason ; that we have a special 
faculty for the perception of right and wrong, 
which we call conscience; and so you may 
say, too, that we have a special faculty for the 
appreciation of beauty, which we call taste, for 
want of a better name. 

Again, since I cannot make any discrimina- 
tion between my three natures, nor call one 
higher or nobler than the others, but am com- 
pelled to do ecjual reverence to body, mind, 
and soul, paying them equal heed and equal 
care, I conclude that taste and conscience and 
reason are of equal importance, equally to be 
obeyed. I know, moreover, that happiness 
only results from the exercise of our faculties, 
and the highest happiness only results from 

26 



Wfje erfwe of WLalintu& 

the equal exercise of all our faculties to a 
normal degree in a normal way. When I 
exercise my reason, I am controlling and 
directing my curiosity in order to arrive at 
the truth; for in no other way can I attain 
pleasure or happiness of mind. When I exer- 
cise my conscience, I am controlling and 
directing my emotions, in order to attain and 
preserve the good, for I cannot have happiness 
of soul in any other way. And when I exer- 
cise my taste, I am controlling and directing 
the work of my hands and the acts of my 
body in such a way as to produce the most 
beautiful result. I know that unless I am 
allowed to work in this way, I can have no joy 
in my work. 

Now furthermore I may conclude, surely, 
that joy in one's work, pleasure in one's emo- 
tions, and satisfaction in one's thoughts, go to 
make up the sum of happiness. And I am 
profoundly skeptical of the validity of any 
theory of conduct which can countenance the 
cultivation of any one of these forms of hap- 

27 



8Wje mnufyip of Ttfatmre 

piness at the expense of the others. If it were 
not true that we can only reach happiness by 
a degree of cultivation of all our faculties, 
there would certainly be many more happy 
people in the world. All people who culti- 
vate their mind assiduously and exclusively 
would be happy, and all those who cultivate 
their taste, with no regard to thought or sin- 
cerity of emotion, would be happy. But this 
is not the case. And more than that, we per- 
ceive that piety is by no means a sure bringer 
of happiness. The blameless life is often hid- 
den under a mask of woebegone unloveliness. 
Our good friends are not happy because they 
have made the mistake of thinking goodness 
the only aspect of the universe, whereas it is 
only one of the three aspects. God does not 
exist as goodness alone; any more than man 
exists as soul alone; but He exists as beauty 
and truth also, just as man also exists as body 
and mind. 

We are not constituted to find pleasure in 
falsehood or wrong, however much our ill- 

28 



balanced natures may seem to do so at times. 
There is always within us the capacity for ap- 
proving what is noble and for believing what 
is true. No more are we constituted for de- 
riving benefit from what is ugly, however we 
may tolerate it. For once show us something 
beautiful in its place, and instantly we are 
influenced by it. Now certainly the love of 
truth and the love of goodness are great vir- 
tues; yet they are no greater, I take it, than 
the love of beauty. And when we allow our- 
selves to act without regard for truth and 
goodness, our acts become injurious to our 
fellow beings, and are called crimes. For the 
same reason I call ugliness, or the creation 
of what is not beautiful, a crime. That it is 
not so considered generally is only too evi- 
dent. When any one creates a beautiful ob- 
ject he is thought to have added to our luxu- 
ries. When a millionaire gives a library to a 
town, he is even thought to have conferred a 
benefit upon the community. This, however, 
is rather from the idea that townspeople are 

29 



&J)e itinsfjtp of Nature 

getting something for nothing than from any 
sense of the beauty of their town being en- 
hanced. Indeed, the library is too often but 
another crime against taste. But any general 
sense of the value of beauty or any general 
sense of the hurtfulness of ugliness, I fear, 
we shall look for in vain. Yet that is not 
true, either; for we all feel the harm of ugli- 
ness. Only we have not been taught to recog- 
nize it as an offence against the public wel- 
fare. The only instance of such recognition 
in recent days is the legislation against the 
disfigurement of the landscape with adver- 
tising signs. Certainly the perpetration of 
these hideous enormities all over the fair earth 
cannot be considered a crime in the ordinary 
sense of the term ; they cause no material injury 
to any one. Yet they do offend every one of 
us, whether we are conscious of it or not; and 
that common, widespread injury, that hurt to 
every man's innate sense of beauty, is of the 
very nature and essence of crime. Public art, 



3° 



2TJ)t etiwe of WLftllututt 

or rather public work, is much more rightly 
the subject of censorship than private morals. 

Of course, the cure for the disease does not 
lie in censorship at all ; it lies in securing free- 
dom for the workman. The appalling ugli- 
ness of our civilization in the mass, its monot- 
ony, its lack of cheerfulness, is only the reflec- 
tion of our own lack of joy and elasticity. Our 
works are hideous, because we have no pleas- 
ure in them; and we have no pleasure in them, 
because we are slaves to commercialism. 

But we must not scold. Only to rail against 
conditions that seem false and unlovely, is to 
be unlovely and false one's self. If we do 
not like things as they are, and do not believe 
in them, let us change them. Let us go about 
it with some degree of good nature and tact; 
for tact is only good taste in matters of con- 
duct. If ever a burden of conviction hurries 
us away into angry speech, let us repent of our 
haste. We shall accomplish little for the good 
cause of beauty by the sacrifice of beauty in 
our own works and words. 

3 1 



JHtratles antj JHetapfoors 



;$Witmle0 antr $&zta$)m% 



NOT the spring only is the time of miracles 
in the natural world, but the year round, day 
and night. The moon comes up behind the 
spruce-trees like a great bubble of crimson 
glass, swelling and rolling slowly southward, 
until it is detached ever so imperceptibly 
from the edges of the dark hill-caldron where 
it was born, and floats away toward the bluish 
roof of stars. When the trees have done 
their gracious tasks of summer, gradually 
they suffer change from one glory to another, 
put off the green, put on the festal liveries of 
autumn, sanguine and yellow and bronze. 
How is the transformation accomplished? 
And all the teeming ephemeral creatures of 
marsh and twilight, what becomes of them, 

35 



STJje mnufyip of Ttfatttrr 

when the time of croaking and buzzing and 
zizzing is over? Where do they go and how 
do they return? 

These are child's questions. Science knows 
many things about them, and by and by will 
tell us more. But always, even to science, 
there is a margin of unknown which makes 
the known seem to wear the guise of the mi- 
raculous; while for the humbler eyes of the 
toiling world the lovely ordered rotations of 
nature must keep their actually miraculous 
seeming still. 

It is a religious feeling, this special love of 
the natural world, and entirely modern. Per- 
haps it is our contribution to the evolution 
of spirit through spheres of religion, our step 
in the long process of emancipation, as little 
by little we grow toward that service which is 
perfect freedom. Lanier has a significant 
paragraph in one of his lately published pa- 
pers, which bears on this consideration. 

" Nothing strikes the thoughtful observer 
of modern literature more quickly or more 

36 



forcibly than the great yearning therein dis- 
played for intimate companionship with 
nature. And this yearning, mark, justifies it- 
self upon far other authority than that which 
one finds in, for example, the Greek nature- 
seeking. Granted the instinctive reverence for 
nature common to both parties: The Greek 
believed the stream to be inhabited by a 
nymph, and the stream was wonderful to him 
because of this nymph, but the modern man 
believes no such thing. One has appeared who 
continually cried love, love, love — love God, 
love neighbours, and these * neighbours ' have 
come to be not only men-neighbours, but 
tree-neighbours, river-neighbours, star-neigh- 
bours." 

I am not quite sure that the Greek's per- 
sonification of the stream was so different 
from our own; I fancy his imaginary divinity 
in it was much the same as ours ; but we are 
glad to extend that universal gospel of love 
to our patient fellows in the sub-human do- 
minions and to the half-animate and inani- 

37 



2TI)e mmfyip of Ttfattttre 

mate apparitions of beauty in a still lower 
realm. 

Then there are the miracles of art, not so 
common as those of nature, more clouded by 
failures and mistakes, but just as marvellous, 
just as potent, and more significant as well. 
There comes a master, unheralded, from an 
obscure corner of the globe; the clay is liv- 
ing in his hands, or the colours take life at 
his touch, or he marshals the tones and sylla- 
bles of sound, and at once a new creation 
springs into almost immortal existence for our 
delighted senses. The tune or the story 
spreads across two continents like the sun, and 
every mortal heart beats faster for keen zest, 
renewed and invigorated as at some miracle 
of nature. Our enjoyment of art is a religion, 
too, for it is the worship of the manifestations 
of spirit taking shape in forms of beauty, just 
as our enjoyment of nature is the worship of. 
spirit manifested in the plasticity of sap and 
cell, — the lovely forms of the outer world. 

These two religions are the worship of na- 

38 



Jftftraclts ana ittctajptjors 

ture and the worship of art, — the reverence 
of the form and the adoration of the spirit 
behind the form. Art, if you care to say so, 
is all made of metaphors, — is itself the uni- 
versal metaphor of the soul. And who shall 
prove that nature is not a metaphor, too? The 
metaphor of miracles in nature is only sup- 
plemented by the miracle of metaphors in 
art. To each this striving, diligent, eager soul 
in us gives allegiance. 



39 



flastejuttjj^aste 



iiaste auir Wbl&U 



It is a common dictum of proverbial phi- 
losophy that " haste makes waste," that in 
hurry we rush upon confusion and miss our 
aim, making less progress than the tardy. But 
it is not so commonly recognized that haste 
really is waste, that it not only causes entangle- 
ment of affairs but wrecks the individuality 
as well. Haste is the fever of power, a malaria 
of the soul; and you will find that the great 
characters of the earth, in history or in our 
own day, are those who have been able to hold 
themselves undistracted and undismayed, — 
without haste. They have had that sanity or 
balance of mind which could perceive the 
futility of hurry and the ultimate triumph of 
serene endeavour. They never allowed them- 

43 



2Ti)* mmt)ip of ttfatttre 

selves to be flustered, there was nothing in their 
blood of the " fluttered folk and wild." Each 
moment was sufficient for itself and its task. 
If there was more to do in an hour than hu- 
man force could accomplish, then it must 
wait the next hour; one thing only was cer- 
tain, no accumulation of duties and obliga- 
tions must be allowed to astound the spirit for 
an instant. For the spirit, the central power 
within us, our self's very self, is in its essence 
and in its quality if not in reality eternal, and, 
when we do not hurry it, dwells in eternity 
amid the fleeting minutes and shows of time. 
This is not the frothy grist of fanciful preci- 
osity; it is common truth. Think for a mo- 
ment. Stop now, as you are reading this 
recent volume, and notice how absolutely un- 
hurried and unperturbed your inmost spirit 
may be. True, you have to hurry at times. 
You may have had to run for your train, or 
you may be late for dinner, you may have a 
stint of work to finish against time. The con- 
sciousness of this has not only made you hurry 

44 



2&aate autr WLnstt 

your steps, it has made you hurry your soul. 
That is wrong. No matter how much of a 
hurry we may be in upon occasion, there is 
always the central consciousness which w T e 
must try to control and keep undisturbed. 
Now, forget your haste, just for a second or 
two, let go, stop pushing the train you are 
riding in, stop trying to do all your work at 
once; and perceive how deliberate, how regal 
and indolent your soul is, how sure of itself, 
how indifferent to the petty chances of punc- 
tuality or accomplished toil. 

Here and to-day we cannot live as our 
fathers used. We cannot escape the pressure 
of modern life altogether, mitigate it as we 
may. But even supposing that you are under 
the necessity of strain in your occupation, that 
your hours are long and your work exacting, 
nothing can excuse haste or hastiness. It seems 
as if there were two selves, — the lower 
humble, obedient, toiling self, who occupies 
your body, sits in it at the table, rides in it 
on the train, walks in it through the street; 

45 



SCtje Xitnsjjuj of Mature 

and the superior, commanding, thoughtful, 
masterly self, who does none of these things, 
but merely looks on and approves. Now, it 
may often be necessary for the inferior self 
to hurry, to drive on the willing body at top 
speed in accomplishment of some good ob- 
ject; but it can never be needful for the domi- 
nant self to be in haste. It is the business 
of the lower self to serve and bear about the 
higher; it is the business of the higher self to 
rule and direct the lower. And if I allow 
my inner imperial self to descend and toil in 
the servant's place, to become hurried and 
anxious and fearful, I am degraded; I deteri- 
orate every minute. I leave the throne un- 
occupied, and yet the work of the scullery is 
no better done. 

Many a man makes a wreck of health and 
happiness through worry. He cannot, as we 
say, possess his soul in patience. He cannot 
see the needs of the hour alone, he is looking 
at the needs of the coming year at the same 
time. No wonder he is abashed and disheart- 

4 6 



2£a8tt an* WLuutt 

ened. A piece of work is to be done. To put 
his hand to it quietly and without worry or 
hurry, would mean that it could be finished 
in a day. If he would only hold his ruling 
self still, and order that useful drudge, his 
secondary self, to perform the labour, a day 
would amply suffice to see it finished. But, no, 
he does not do that. He is infected with the 
modern plague of haste. His soul is nervous; 
it is not content to sit by and see the work 
performed ; it must rush down and tire itself 
out in tasks it was never meant to be occupied 
with. So our friend frets and fumes over his 
work for a week before he begins it; it keeps 
him awake at night; it disturbs his appetite; 
it makes him nervous and fanciful and incom- 
petent; and when at last he does drag him- 
self through the performance, the work is 
ill done. 

Yes, it is necessary, in order to secure good 
work, that we should throw ourselves into 
it whole-heartedly, as the phrase goes. There 
must be no half-measures; we must be ab- 

47 



sorbed absolutely in the task before us. But 
this does not mean that the directing soul, the 
loftier self, must be engrossed. It means only 
that all those powers and faculties are to be 
employed which rightly can be employed in 
labour. It is not the province of the soul to 
labour. Its proper office is to exist, to be and 
enjoy, to sorrow if it must, to rejoice when it 
can, to direct, order, and govern. 

It is absolutely necessary that we guard 
against the intrusion of haste within the pre- 
cincts of the spirit. If we have no habit of 
easy work, no faculty for accomplishing 
things without effort, we must try to acquire it. 
For it is above all things desirable that we 
should live without fret and strain and haste 
in the inmost chambers of being. It does not 
make the least difference what the occupation 
may be. You enter a studio, perhaps, where 
the wialls are dim and reposeful, where the 
atmosphere is quiet, and where you might 
suppose no haste nor disquiet ever entered. 
But what do you find? The occupant is a 

48 



modern painter. One glance condemns him; 
he is doomed ; the blight of haste is upon him ; 
every movement of his hand, every turn of his 
head, reveals the fever of excitement under 
which he is working. He cannot be himself 
for a minute, no, not for a second. He is 
bereft of control. He is consumed with haste. 
The fatal malady of modern life against which 
we must fight has taken hold on him. You 
perceive at once that he is not living at the 
centre of his being at all. His soul, instead 
of remaining in its secret chamber, alone, 
contemplative, kindly, serene, and glad, has 
rushed into his haste-driven fingers. His work 
is killing him, because he is not doing it prop- 
erly, and the work itself is being ruined for 
want of proper balance and control. 

On the other hand, look at this workman 
in a machine-shop. The belts are whirring 
and the cogs roaring all around him; the 
dingy house of iron and glass is a rattlebox of 
noise and dust and ceaseless clang. You would 
say that repose in such a place were impossi- 

49 



&t)t mmtiip of TSTatttre 

ble. And yet he goes about his work with a 
quiet pleasure, with a poise and deliberation, 
that show he has learned the secret of work 
and of repose. He is intent, zealous, and effi- 
cient; you would even say he is absorbed in 
his daily business. But you perceive that at 
the centre of his being there is calm. He has 
learned to possess his soul. He is without 
haste. 



5o 



%t tfre Coming of Spring 



$W fye Comtna of Sprtnu 



As the natural year draws round to a finish 
and the perished winter merges into spring, 
the old impulses for recreation are revived. 
Not a foot but treads the pavement a trifle 
more eagerly, with more divine discontent, as 
the hours of sunshine lengthen and soften at 
the approach of April. How loving, alluring, 
and caressing the air was the other day, — full 
of rumours from the south, news of the vast 
migrations already beginning and soon to en- 
compass us with their unnumbered people. 
Already the first summer visitors have ap- 
peared in the hills and over the marshes, by 
ones and twos, the vanguard of the hosts of oc- 
cupation ; and even in the bad-lands of the city 
canyons we have intimations of these miracu- 

53 



lous changes. There come to us, deep in the 
heart, familiar but uncomprehended prompt- 
ings to vagabondage, to fresh endeavour, 
to renewal of life and wider prospects; hope 
comes back with the south wind, and courage 
comes in on the tide. Plodding is all very well 
through streets of slush and under skies of 
slate; but when the roads are dry underfoot 
and day is blue again overhead, the methods 
of mere endurance and drudgery will no 
longer ser^ve. The tramp instinct, which is 
no respecter of respectability, wakes up and 
has its due. On Sunday thousands of bicycles 
appear, like flies in the sudden warmth; on 
Monday there are carnations in the button- 
holes of Wall Street; while every hansom on 
the Avenue is freighted with the destruction 
of another Troy. For this is early spring and 
the time of recreation is come. 

If we think of the affairs of the universe 
as controlled by laws of rhythm, there seems 
to be a rhythm here, too, — the rhythm of 
creation and recreation, the contraction and 

54 



expansion of the heart of humanity. In obedi- 
ence to this law we flock cityward in the fall, 
congregating and socializing ourselves for 
mutual dependence of work, — the plodding, 
uninspired necessary work of the world; but 
when the confining forces of winter are with- 
drawn, society disintegrates again, pouring 
itself out into the wider regions of country, 
out-door life, leisure, recreation. We have a 
yearning to be desocialized, that the individual 
may expand. Cooperation and dependence 
become irksome. The simple human heart has 
a call to care for its own greatest needs, and 
must have fresh air and a bit of solitude, 
time to think and room to breathe, a break in 
the fence and an open road over the hill. 
The desire of freedom is like a seed; once 
lodged in a crack of the walls of circumstance, 
it may disrupt the well-built order of con- 
ventional progress, but it will have light and 
space. Good ventilation is our only safeguard 
against disaster in this direction. You cannot 
kill the seed, you can only see to it that the 

55 



Sfjt wtimfyip of Mature 

walls have plenty of wide, airy crevices where 
the wind and sun may penetrate freely. 

There is another rhythmic flux and reflux in 
the relation of art to life; the creations of the 
one are the recreation of the other. It is the 
business of art to furnish us an escape from 
the actual, a spacious colony in the provinces 
of beauty, and free transportation thither. A 
new picture or a new volume of poems or a 
new story is not worth much if it does not 
give one a passage to some unexplored corner 
of that far country. You think, perhaps, 
this is a chimerical fancy, — the foolishness of 
a visionary conception of art, calculated to 
divorce art more and more from the actual. 
No, for it is the business, as it is the wish, of 
the actual to remould itself constantly nearer 
and nearer some ideal, some model, some 
normal standard; and this model it is the busi- 
ness of art to create. The earth has been 
infected with epidemics of insanity before 
now, — with the tulip craze and the South 
Sea bubble, for instance. It is the madness 

56 



&t ttje ©owing of Spring 

of our time and country to fancy that benefits 
are the greater as they are the more tangible, 
and that happiness is inherent in material 
things. But joy and elation and betterment 
reside in appreciation, not in possession. The 
owner of a picture is the man who can make 
it his own, not the man in whose house it has 
been immured. Our sedulous laws regulate 
the transference of ponderable commodities 
and the appearance of things; but the traffic 
in realities, between mind and mind, is contra- 
band and free. It is in this trade that the 
artist is engaged; if his merchandise is inap- 
preciable and invaluable, his returns must be 
so, too. His visible compensation must be pre- 
carious, — a matter of circumstance; his true 
compensation will always be just and equi- 
table. As no one knows how much his work 
cost him, no one can know how well he was 
repaid for it. But you may be sure that there 
was no discrepancy in that transaction. 

Our recreation should be not merely sport, 
but a true recreation of forces. The best 

57 



W&e itmsijtj) of TJCatttrr 

recreation is that reengendering of the spirit 
which takes place through the avenues of art. 
To meet, to know, to assimilate perfectly some 
fresh creation of art, is to be recreated thor- 
oughly, — to be put in tune anew, and set in 
harmony once more. 

The best of wisdom in learning is to learn 
the various cures and remedies to medicine the 
mind. Poor volatile sensitive mind of man, 
so easily thrown out of gear, so easily read- 
justed! So when the time of the singing of 
birds is come, and the months of application 
are drawing to a close, and you begin to look 
about for recreation, you must not take it at 
haphazard. The recreation must be personal, 
suited at once to self and to season. The art 
most accessible to us all is folded between 
covers of cloth or paper, and may be carried 
with us to the mountains or the shore. If it 
is well selected, it will serve to second the 
athletic recreations of the body, and put us in 
fine accord with the influences of nature and 
thought. If it is ill selected, our holiday may 

58 



<Mt tije ©owing of SjJtrtns 

result in dyspeptic days of unprofitable idle- 
ness. For idleness is like everything else, it 
may be either good or bad. True idleness con- 
sists in doing nothing, with the grace and 
mastery of an accomplishment; this is an art. 
False idleness consists in doing nothing, but in 
doing it with the ill-nature and sloth of dis- 
content; this is criminal. A beautiful idle- 
ness requires temper and genius; and though 
people of means may fancy they can compass 
it, you will nearly always find a discordant 
restlessness somewhere in their leisure. It is 
only the artist in life who can afford to be an 
idler, and you may take it as sober earnest that 
he is no debauchee of inactivity. 



59 



CJ)e Vernal Sties 



®)e Vernal Sires 



It is one of those happy phrases in which 
Emerson abounds, fresh and racy without be- 
ing slipshod, homely but distinguished. What 
suggestions does it not carry of suns and warm 
breezes, of mounting sap and wild bird calls, 
and the purple evening hills! 

There is a day in February which marks 
off the gray time of winter from the green 
time of spring as clearly as a line on a calendar. 
Even the brightest December sunshine gives 
no ray of hope; it is relentless, forbidding, 
unpromising; the sky foretells only an eternity 
of changeless cold ; one could never look upon 
it and prophesy the miracle of summer. But 
by and by there comes a February morning, 
when the frost may not be less keen, nor the 

63 



Wfyt ffctnsijij) of Nature 

sunshine more bright, yet there is a different 
expression on the face of the elements. Hope 
has been born somewhere in the far south, and 
there are premonitions of change, portents of 
liberation and joy. It is the first faint rumour 
of spring. And though the blizzard may 
sweep down again out of the north in the next 
hour, we know his victory will not be lasting; 
" the vernal ides " are on their way; the old 
Aprilian triumph is at hand. A little pa- 
tience more, a few weeks or days, and we shall 
behold the first signals of their advance; the 
buds will be on the trees; a sudden wild song, 
fleeting but unmistakable, will break across 
the noon and be gone again almost before we 
can recognize it. And then at last we shall 
wake up in some golden morning, with a 
blessed song-sparrow singing his litany of joy 
in our enchanted ears, and know the vernal 
ides at last are here. 

It is only in the north that we fully love the 
spring. After these iron months of unremit- 
ting struggle with the giant cold, the spirit is 

64 



8Cfjt Vtvnal Ktres 

glad when relief comes at length; and the 
season of returning vitality has a festal charm 
all its own. The day when the river breaks up 
is a holiday in the heart, whether we work 
or not. All winter long it has lain there before 
our doors, a broad, white road between the 
hills, swept with gusts of sparkling drift in 
the hard, bleak sunlight, gleaming bluish and 
mystical while the enormous moon stood over 
its solitary wastes, — dumb, prisoning, im- 
placable. But at last deliverance arrives, and 
the bumping, crunching, jamming ice-floe is 
starting seaward with a thousand confused 
voices, while the old faithful blue appears 
once more glimmering and golden and glad. 
The first dip of the canoe's bow into that fa- 
miliar flood, the first stroke of the paddle, the 
first long sunny day afloat among the willow 
stems in the overflowed meadow lands, and 
the first call of the golden-wing, lone and 
high, over wood and lake! The gladness of 
such a season comes only to those who have 
endured the gray storms, the low, cold suns 

65 



&J)e muuWv of Xatttre 

and the purple vaulted night, where every- 
thing is sealed with the slumber of the 
frost. 

Little wonder that the vernal ides should 
fill so large a place in the northern imagina- 
tion. Long inheritance of April happiness 
has given us that peculiar malady we call 
spring fever; has given us, too, a special spir- 
itual sympathy or wonder in the reviving year. 
This truly religious sense has made itself 
widely felt in the racial expression, in the arts 
of poetry and painting. 

" Oh, to be in England, now that April's there, 

And whoever wakes in England sees some morning, 

unaware, 
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf 
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf, 
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough 
In England — now ! " 

These " Home Thoughts from Abroad," of 
Browning, or Mr. Kipling's lyrical cry of the 
exile in India, with their refrain, " It is spring 

66 



&f>* Vernal Ktres 

in England now," embody the northern senti- 
ment, a worship which may be pagan, but is 
certainly lovely and wholesome, for — 

" Spring still makes spring in the mind, 
When sixty years are told." 

Of the mood which comes with the vernal 
ides, are born those aspirations and outpour- 
ings which have come to be a byword under 
the name of spring poetry. Perhaps the fact 
that the celebration is overdone to so ridicu- 
lous an excess is really no discredit, though 
one finds a new note seldom enough. Yet I 
wonder whether the vernal ides are truly 
a time favourable to artistic creation. If there 
are seasons of the mind, its April should be a 
month of starting and growth, of extended 
horizons, renewed vigour, fresh inspirations. 
But the month of fruitage is September or 
October, and the achievements of art are ri- 
pened to perfection in the Indian summer of 
the soul. It is not under the immediate stress 
of a great emotion that a great work is pro- 

6 7 



arne 2itH8!)ijp of Nature 

duced ; most often it is the result of the long, 
silent cogitation, when the mind sits in au- 
tumnal luxury thinking to itself. In the 
vernal ides who would spend an hour on 
remembrance? When those days return we 
are too thankful for mere life, too sated with 
the rapturous zest of being, to dwell with fond- 
ling care over the swarming creations of fancy. 
And yet, there is our father Chaucer with that 
never stale opening of the prologue to his 
wondrous tales. 

Of the inspirational value of these vernal 
ides there can be no doubt. They come back 
to us year by year with messages and reminders 
from the unfailing sources of life; they are 
heathen Druidic Easter days, symbols of im- 
mortal gladness and strength. When they 
dawn, we must bring out the flame-coloured 
robe of pleasure, and leave our old black 
garment of distrust, our overshoes of doubt, 
and our umbrella of skepticism in the closet. 
No pessimist must stir abroad when April 
comes. But we must all stand with bright 

68 



faces and clapping hands, when the long pro- 
cession with banners of green moves up from 
the south. It is the feast of the vernal 
ides. 



69 



Cfje g>eeti of Success 



©je Seetr of Succ&ss 



After all is said and done, where does suc- 
cess reside? In material advantages, in soli- 
tary contentment, in lofty resignation? Is it 
in securing an aim after long years of en- 
deavour, or is it in the daily realization of ac- 
complished toil? Shall we measure it by the 
patent standard of the visible shows and cir- 
cumstances of life, acknowledged by every 
one, or by the inward silent sanction of the 
individual conscience? 

Perhaps before one answers one must recall 
the ultimate aims and ambitions of this so 
frail mortality. Ask yourself, ask your 
friend, ask the first man you pass. I fancy 
they will tell you in one word, happiness is 
the end of man's endeavour. Just to be happy, 

73 



STJje mnnftip of TSutuvt 

to taste even for a moment the zest of radiant 
joy, is to partake of immortality. And to 
secure for himself as many serene hours and 
ecstatic moments as may be, this is the real aim 
of every man. 

Why do I desire estates, houses, display, 
friends, a family, society, pomp, luxury, 
power, ease, or amusement? Solely because 
in these things there reside momentary pleas- 
ures; because in them there are opportunities 
of reviving hour by hour the fleeting instants 
of unadulterated gladness; because in appre- 
ciating or experiencing them, the unresting 
spirit finds the very breath of its life. 

You ask me whether I call So-and-So suc- 
cessful ; I must ask you whether he has been 
happy. It may be he was poor and looked 
down upon ; but even so he was by no means 
unsuccessful, unless he was dejected, unless 
he longed for fame and wealth. It may be he 
was crowned with every tangible evidence of 
success, a man of note and influence, sur- 
rounded by everything he had striven for; still 

74 



Stye Sntr of Success 

I call him unsuccessful if there lurked at his 
heart some faint reek of discontent. No, to 
be successful is to be happy. Happiness is 
success. If there can but permeate the spirit 
some floating sense and savour of joy, as we 
live, then is our success assured. If every 
day we can feel, if only for a moment, the 
elation of being alive, the realization of being 
our best selves, of filling out our destined scope 
and trend, you may be sure we are succeeding. 

And for one I must fancy that this gladness 
of life, this sure, radiant, happy sense of suc- 
cess comes only to the loving heart. It is 
very trite but very true to call love the seed 
of success. 

If anything can fill a human heart with that 
sunny warmth of loving kindness, for that 
individual success is already assured. Look at 
the people in the street, the faces streaming 
past you, as you walk. It is sad to note how 
many are the sorry, dejected, sick, and dis- 
pirited. But even as you look on these trans- 
parent masks, do you not know intuitively 

75 



that the reason of their unhappy plight is their 
lack of success, and that the reason of their 
lack is their want of love? It is not a question 
of relative wealth. There are not more un- 
happy faces in one class than another. Think 
of the delicious thrill of encouragement one 
has now and again simply in encounter- 
ing a glad, happy human face passing in the 
throng. Happiness, perhaps, comes by the 
grace of Heaven; but the wearing of a happy 
countenance, the preserving of a happy mien, 
is a duty, not a blessing. If I am so unloving 
and embittered that there is no suffusion of 
love in my heart which can show in my face, 
at least I am bound by every sacred obliga- 
tion to my fellows to maintain a smiling coun- 
tenance. Yes, even if it be insincere. For 
two reasons, for the sake of others, and for 
the sake of myself. There is nothing more 
potent than habit; and a sullen, hang-dog, 
injured, resentful expression is not only an 
unkindness to others but a menace to ourselves. 
While he who continually wears a smile 

7 6 



&%t Seen of Sttmss 

must at times be betrayed into a smiling glad- 
ness of spirit. 

Let us remember the wisdom of the students 
of expression, in this regard, and be sure that 
if the inward habit of mind can control and 
form the outward habit of the body, this same 
outward habit of the features and frame im- 
presses itself reflexly on the indwelling spirit. 
It is a realization of this truth that makes the 
Japanese insist so rigorously on the courteous 
seeming in all their daily deportment. Cheer- 
fulness is with them a social duty; and if every 
man is not successful he is at least required to 
assume the aspect of success, the guise of a 
happy, contented spirit. How much might 
we not add to the total sum of our happi- 
ness as a people, if we, too, felt such an obliga- 
tion. If you can find any justification for 
putting an unhappy murderer to death, there 
surely ought to be some punishment for that 
unsocial creature who constantly shows a 
gloomy face to the world. What right have 
you to sulk or be sad of visage? Your sorrow 

77 



3Tf)ir mu$W» Of Nattttt 

is, after all, no more than the common inheri- 
tance of all our kind, and there is before us 
still the old duty of brave, cheerful heroism. 
In the name of all the saints, therefore, let us 
pluck up a heart from somewhere and turn a 
pleasant look upon the world! We shall thus 
all become conspirators for happiness, each 
man in collusion with his neighbour to in- 
crease the sum of joy in the earth, to lighten 
the burden of the days and to put far off the 
night-time of inevitable natural sorrow. 

Then, too, think how the seed of success in 
all our artistic achievements is constantly re- 
vealing itself as the spirit of loving cheerful- 
ness. There is nothing but the warmth of 
devotion which can irradiate and illumine the 
crafts of our hands. No skill, no technique, 
no device, no love of traditions, is competent 
for an instant to take the place of the artist's 
love and care. You will see it in every line 
the painter draws, in every note the musician 
sounds, or you will miss it sorely. And wher- 
ever you are brought into touch with any piece 

78 



&t)c Sulr of Success 

of art that has the power to move you, you 
may be certain it has influence over the frail 
human heart because of the love in the heart 
of its creator. This is true, not only of the 
fine arts, but of all those less ambitious but no 
less honest arts we call industrial, to which so 
much untold toil has gone in the long history 
of man. 



19 



4fact attt jfancg 



fact atrtr $ auctj 



BETWEEN fancy and fact lies the dilemma 
we call life. On the one hand, things as they 
are; on the other, things as we would have 
them be. On the one side, the solid, durable, 
implacable circumstance; on the other, the 
plastic will, the deviable desire, the incerti- 
tude of mind. And yet the fact is not estab- 
lished beyond the influence of fancy. We are 
no more victims of circumstance than circum- 
stance is the shadow of ourselves. We are 
moulded, we say, by the conditions and sur- 
roundings in which we live; but we too often 
forget that the environment is largely what 
we make it. We are like children living in 
fear of the fabulous giant, if we do not remem- 
ber that fact is solidified fancy. What is the 

83 



2TJ)e m\wl)ip of TSTattitre 

form and substance of our daily life but the 
realization of countless years of aspiration and 
resolve? 

There is nothing accomplished that is not 
just the impalpable breath of dream, a sug- 
gestion, a hint of spirit; on this the active 
self lays hold, and forges it into the more per- 
manent shape. We make our habits, our cus- 
toms, our possessions, as spiders spin their airy 
nets. The massive fabrication of civilized 
communities is reared from stuff more vola- 
tile than the clouds, only half of it is solid. 
And yet it is in awe of these floating appari- 
tions that we pass so much time. 

This is unwholesome. Fear is a malarial 
germ in the soul. If only the world could cast 
out fear and establish hope in its place, the 
morning of the millennium would be already 
far advanced. But if we would not fear, then 
we must love. If we would not shrink from 
the facts of life, we must love them. We are 
creatures so strangely compounded of dust and 
dream, that we can never wholly give our 

84 



iFact autr jFanc» 

allegiance to either one. We are neither ani- 
mal nor angeL at present; and wherever our 
trend of aspiration may lead us in future, 
certainly this life is in some sense a compro- 
mise. Desirable as the angelic ideal appears, 
beautiful as it is for an ultimate goal, there 
is the fact of the physical to be taken count 
of, to be respected, to be reverenced, to be 
loved, equally with the spiritual. They miss 
the very core and gist of human life, it seems 
to me, who forget this miracle, the union of 
mind and matter. And certainty we shall 
accomplish little by an undivided devotion to 
the one side of life at the expense of the other. 
It sometimes appears that every human ill can 
be traced to the divergence between fancy and 
fact, between what we have done and what 
we would do. And this again is traceable to 
the faulty idea in the first instance. 

It is evident, then, how loyal we need be 
to the promptings of fancy, to the inspiration 
to the glimmering of genius. For if we mis- 
interpret or disregard this word of the spirit, 

85 



Stye &f nsijUi of Watttre 

we are but setting out toward disaster. Our 
wrong initiative gradually takes more and 
more solid form in fact; the fact closes in 
moment by moment, and we are taken in the 
toils of our own weaving, which we too often 
call inevitable fate. But if a loyalty to the 
intimations of spirit is so large a part of wis- 
dom, a loyalty to fact is needed, too, — a loy- 
alty to those past ideas we have made perma- 
nent. It is good at times to let fancy be, to 
disregard the restless urgings of the inner 
life and dwell with the comfortable lower 
kingdoms, with the trees and the cattle. 

That is one reason why we must take care 
to have our ideals right, so that when they 
have become crystallized into circumstance 
and conditions we shall be able to live with 
them. It is an unhappy soul that cannot live 
with its facts. If my outward material sur- 
roundings and my relations with my fellow 
beings are such that I cannot live with them 
quietly, normally, and frankly, as the weeks go 
by, but must depend on the intellectual and 

86 



iFact autr ffimtg 

spiritual life wholly, then I am on the road 
to sickness and sorrow. For fact and fancy 
cannot be long divorced; the one cannot live 
without the other; they are the body and soul 
of the universe. To the materialist must be 
said: "Cleave close to your fancy. Never 
forsake for a moment that generous and faith- 
ful guide. Be not overengrossed with the 
visible and solid beauty of being." To the 
overstrenuous idealist must be said : " Hold 
hard to fact. Live near the comforting, un- 
restless blessings of the actual. Never stray 
too far from the physical phase of existence, 
lest you wander and be lost for ever." 

Men and women who take upon themselves 
the tasks of the intellectual life, who try ever 
so humbly to help forward the work of under- 
standing the world, who wish to illumine and 
cheer the dark recesses of being, are peculiarly 
in danger of ignoring the fact. Eager and 
sedulous in the pursuit of this dream or that, 
as artists or preachers or teachers or reform- 
ers, they become wholly absorbed in the emo- 

87 



tional and mental life, neglecting the material. 
They are forerunners of better facts which 
they wish to see established and for which they 
too easily die. It is better to live for a purpose 
than to die for it, — unless to die is necessary. 
But our friends the enthusiasts who secure for 
us so much good, who are in the last analysis 
the authors of all the good deeds of man, 
should be content to hasten slowly, and, while 
they strive for perfection, to hold the sadly 
imperfect we have already gained. It will 
avail you nothing to stand face to face with 
the vision, if you cannot in some way make 
actual and apparent to men the beauty you 
have beheld. Let aspiration be as ethereal as 
you will, the spirit of beauty must be made 
manifest to be fully enjoyed. 

Are you sick or sorry or dejected, or un- 
fortunate, or overwrought? There may be 
one of two reasons for it; either you are living 
too far away from your ideal or too far away 
from your facts. If you are world-sick, retreat 
into the chamber of your own heart, be quiet 



iFact an* iFatus 

and obedient to your genius, and summon to 
your aid the great and kindly master's thought. 
A little solitude, a little contemplation, a little 
love, is the cure for your malady. But if you 
are soul-sick from too much stress of the eager 
indomitable spirit, then put all thought aside; 
vegetate, animalize, be ordinary, and thank 
God there are easy, unambitious things to do. 
Curl up close to some fact, if it is only a 
dog, or a wood fire, or the south side of a 
barn, and forget your immortal soul. Your 
mortal body is just exactly as important, and 
deserves just as much care and consideration. 
Be wise, be indolent, try to live in your body 
and not merely inhabit it, and do not fuss over 
the Great Tangle. " Who leans upon Allah, 
Allah belongs to him." 



89 



Caster Cta 



Caster 1&H 



PERHAPS one must say that Christmas Day 
is the happiest festival of the Christian year, 
but certainly none has more fine subtle glad- 
ness than Easter. On Christmas morning we 
celebrate the great fact of being human; we 
commemorate the coming of One who was 
intensely a man, known, seen, touched, and be- 
loved of our own very kind, a perfect comrade 
and son, the embodiment of all we know to be 
best in mortal beings. At Easter we celebrate 
the immortal fancy of an imperishable life. 
It is the season of rapture, of lyric belief in 
more than human possibility, the day on which 
the timorous soul is summoned to put trust 
in the very frailest probability, yet with the 
stoutest, most stubborn faith. Laying aside 

93 



art)* Hitustjijj of Mature 

doubt and the prosy mind, the soul now and 
again asserts her right to an hour of pure ideal- 
ism where the solid and safe of actuality can 
have no part. She insists that conviction is 
enough, that proof is not necessary, that her 
beloved dream must come true because she has 
dreamed it so often and so hard. She will 
hear no cold discouragement from her scien- 
tific sister mind; she persists in being fondly 
wilful in her own sweet way. What do the 
plain deductions of all the doctors, of all the 
schools count with her? Is not her own in- 
tuition more reliable? Shall she forsake the 
warm, comfortable doctrine of a beautiful 
immortality for the barren desolation of the 
fleeting fact? It is moods of the spirit such as 
this, that one commemorates in the Easter 
celebrations. 

Apart from the accepted religious signifi- 
cance of the day, there is still a whole cult of 
lovely and encouraging natural religion cling- 
ing about the Easter holiday which we ought 
to be very loath to discard. Rather, indeed, 

94 



Easter ISbe 

let us foster all its gentle associations and cus- 
toms. For if we are compelled to change our 
way of thinking on religious themes, we are 
not compelled to change our way of feeling 
about them. And the essence of religion is the 
emotion, not the thought, — the sure and cer- 
tain conviction, not the logical conclusion. 
The foundations of life are still far beyond 
the reach of investigation; but among the 
realities of life as we perceive it is the sense 
of trust in continual goodness and abiding 
love. Why should you and I vex ourselves 
about the problem of immortality for the soul? 
You, with all your old-time religious certain- 
ties, are not more joyously convinced of it than 
I, though I can offer you not a single proof. 
On the eve of such a festival in the midst of 
spring, what memories return with the April 
winds! The breath of approaching life sifts 
through the trees and grasses, the sound of 
running water stirs in the wild places, the birds 
make songs as they fly, there is everywhere the 
renewal of the ancient rapture of earth; 

95 



Etje iUusfjijj of Mature 

yet in the twilight one remembers all those 
glad experiences which are to be repeated no 
more, and the faces of unreturning compan- 
ions. 

So that if Easter is the gladdest of days, the 
eve of Easter is the saddest. It is now that I 
remember my vanished friend. In vain you 
speak to me of comfort or solace; in vain you 
offer me the consolations of some supreme 
faith. It is not lofty nobility of resignation 
that will aid me; I care not for all the sacra- 
ments and sanctions of your oldest religion; 
neither dogma nor theory can avail to help me 
here; for after all I ask so little. I only want 
to see my friend again, to run my arm about 
his shoulder, to see his slow, comfortable smile, 
to hear that gracious, melodious voice. It is 
just these common, human, earthly, unecstatic 
things I crave. And yet they are denied. Is 
it not hard? Time, you say, will assuage this 
desolation? No, for as time goes on I shall 
only need him the more. I shall be more and 
more impoverished by his absence, for hardly 

"96 



Easter Etoe 

a day goes by that I would not have profited 
by his friendship. In this crisis, in that di- 
lemma, I should be so enriched by his encour- 
agement, his fortitude, his calm, his sympathy, 
his insight. And wanting all this, I am poorer 
every minute that he is away. 

Yet you tell me it is the fairest of April days, 
in the best of worlds. Yes, I know; I know 
all that; and I yield to no one in this foolish 
modern devotion to nature; but I tell you 
the universal human experience is right; 'tis 
friends and not places that make the world. 
You can not fool my heavy heart with the 
windy consolations of the pines, nor the sol- 
emn anthem of the sea. I want something 
more common, less stupendous, more human. 
Ah, but give me one more day with the man 
who was my friend! 

No, it is not the law. The gods themselves 
cannot control the Fates. I shall not find his 
like again. But every April as the earth 
revives, and the returning forces of the grain 
and the sun and the vital air bring renewal of 

97 



2Ttje iuuai)U> of Nature 

joys to the creatures of this globe, I shall feel 
the renewed want of him, and I shall listen for 
him in vain in our accustomed haunts. There 
is no mitigation to that sorrow. But in the 
memory of his great, human, loving kindness 
there is the seed of an imperishable joy, the 
sufficient foundation for at least one man's 
faith. His influence remains; indeed, it grow r s 
and ripens about me; and as it has become 
invisible, it has also become more strong. 
Through the subtle avenues of affection I par- 
take somewhat of his generous endowments. 
You shall find that I and all his friends are 
tempered by the quality of his personality. If 
he is no longer here as an apparent force in 
the world of affairs, those whom he loved are 
made the unconscious vessels of his imperish- 
able power, the instruments of that potent 
spirit. Even while we grieve for him, his 
influence is transforming us to the likeness 
of something better than our former daily 
selves; and we begin to share in the imper- 



98 



sonal greatness, however imperfectly, with 
which he is invested. 

Is not this true for you as well as for me? 
Have you not some such friend to recall at 
the great spring festival? And glad as you 
have been for the actual fact of sober existence, 
are you not equally glad for the unsubstantial 
fancy of immortality? Do you not assent to 
the fine and ancient faith which is embodied 
in the celebration of Easter? 



ILofC. 



99 



Cf)e Cost of 35eautp 



Qfyt <&o&t of ISeautj) 



BEAUTY, you would say at first guess, is like 
genius; it is above cost and without price. It 
is, in the outward and manifest world of ap- 
pearance, what genius is in the inward and 
spiritual world of imagination. Each in its 
own realm is the miraculous phenomenon of 
perfection, exhibited in the midst of a multi- 
tude of imperfections, arousing our wonder 
and enthusiasm to heights beyond the usual; 
so that around beauty or genius we are always 
ready to form the rudiments of a cult, to invest 
it with something of reverence, to begin to 
make it an object of worship. Indeed our 
attitude toward it has the elements of a relig- 
ious feeling, and implies a tacit belief in its 
divine origin, as we express it. 

103 



art)* mwWp of Ttfatttr* 

Into our limited view, surrounded every- 
where by restrictions and laws, beauty and 
genius come as supra-legal apparitions, com- 
pelling allegiance, stimulating joy, exciting 
reverence. They are, it seems to us, messen- 
gers and envoys extraordinary, accredited with 
intimations from the unknown, to which we 
gladly give ear. They embody and fore- 
shadow those traits of winning loveliness 
toward which we aspire; they already are 
what we would be, — our aspirational and en- 
nobled selves. One glimpse of beauty, one 
hint of genius, is sufficient illumination for a 
single day, — yes, perhaps for a lifetime, as 
we simple mortals are constituted. How old a 
story that is, wherein some loved form of 
beauty, early known and lost, has served as the 
enduring inspiration for a lifelong human 
experience! And how often we have heard of 
the trend of a character changed utterly by a 
single thought, a single gleam of genius! 

Small wonder, then, if we have come near 
to making genius a demigod and beauty a 

104 



JSTije @08t of iicauty 

divinity. It is on the basis of this superhuman 
conception that our regard for them has been 
fostered. 

In a more modern, scientific aspect, what 
are we to say to the appearance of beauty 
manifest to the senses, of genius revealed in 
thought? Merely that they are the natural 
outcome of natural law, in no way more mi- 
raculous than the imperfect and tentative com- 
monplace world about us. But how, in that 
case, is my enthusiasm to be retained, my devo- 
tion and respect to be held? It is a trite 
enough question. There is no fear that revela- 
tions of new knowledge can make the further 
unknown seem paltry or familiar. Once let 
us accept reverence for law in place of a rever- 
ence for the supernatural, as it was called, — 
once let us acquire the habit of free belief in 
place of the habit of credulous timidity, and 
the borders of wisdom will seem infinite ; the 
horizon of wonder will enlarge at each step of 
knowledge ; and what we see will appear even 
more wonderful than we could faintly imag- 

105 



Uttlt lunstjiiJ of Nature 

ine. We shall come to think of beauty as the 
complete realization of some typical thought 
under the restraint of law; and of genius 
as the partial manifestation of thought itself 
under a like restriction. 

Beauty, then, and genius will seem no longer 
priceless ; their value will be very definite. It 
will appear that they are produced under the 
most exact and exacting operations of the great 
economy of nature. We shall see that they 
have been priced at an enormous cost, just 
as we knew they could be sold for a song, — 
beauty the most perishable and fleeting of 
things, genius the most volatile and imponder- 
able; this we knew; but we supposed they 
came as easily as they went. Ah, no! far from 
that. 

You find some object of art, some beautiful 
thing the hands of man have fashioned, and 
ask what it cost. Here is a wooden tobacco- 
box made by a Japanese artist generations ago. 
You mark the loving care expended on it; you 
see it never could have been created by rule; 

1 06 



8Cije <&ost of iirautg 

you notice how the humble love of the crafts- 
man utilized every grain and knot of the wood, 
how he accommodated his talent to the un- 
yielding exigencies of the material, yet in the 
end compelled it to serve his expressional 
need; it is nothing short of a masterpiece of 
genius. And what do you think it cost? Love, 
devotion, restraint, self-denial, endurance, 
fidelity, patience, faith, humility, diligence, 
serenity, scrupulous living, and an untarnished 
mind. Do you recall the years of ungrudging 
privation, of unquestioning toil, that made that 
inspiration of beauty possible? Or here is a 
modern binding, not remarkable perhaps, yet 
bearing evident traces of loving craftsman- 
ship. Do you know how long the binder must 
sit at his bench before he can learn to master 
the cunning gold for tooling and edges? A 
friend of mine asked an old gilder the other 
day how long it would take to learn his art. 
" Well," he answered, " some can learn it in 
five years, and some never learn it." More 
patience, more devotion, more love and faith. 

107 



W§t mnufyip of ttf attttre 

Yes, all art, the product of genius, comes of 
toil. And the previous question behind that, 
— the explanation of natural beauty and 
genius itself. The first spring flower, or the 
first bluebird in the orchard; are they the 
creations of a moment, the inspiration of na- 
ture on the instant? Think of the endless 
unrecorded history implied in that word evo- 
lution, — the ages of endurance, of failure, 
of submission, of tentative and countless varia- 
tion, of changing type and perishing order, and 
this one frail individual emerging at last, to 
hang in the sun for so brief a heart-beat ! Your 
Easter lilies cost more than a voyage from Ber- 
muda. To bring them to perfection the earth 
must swing like a pendulum in space, and the 
sun and moon operate the machinery of the 
tides for more aeons than we know. 



1 08 



mijptfjm 



Eljtjfym 



Now that spring is returning, there comes 
again the old wonder at its loveliness, the old 
radiant sense of joy, the old touch of sadness, 
— the sorrow of the world. If we awake in 
the serene sunlight of some still April dawn, 
and find our life on the flowery earth very 
good, we also feel the question which underlies 
the murmurous twilight, — the disturbing 
question of the universe to which there is no 
reply. 

In the morning, as you stroll from the house, 
the buds are breaking, the grass is springing 
green and new; there is no need for intro- 
spection; it is enough to be alive; self-con- 
sciousness is folly. Only the sick are self- 
conscious; and the first step on the road to 

in 



health is forgetfulness of self. You realize 
this as the beauty of April comes over you 
once more, and all your senses become ab- 
sorbed in nature and forget to brood idly on 
themselves. 

But in April there is more than the mere 
robust delight of the morning; there is the 
profound sorrow of the spring, the ancient 
and unutterable loneliness and sadness of hu- 
man life, which has been going on for so many 
untold ages, renewing itself in confidence each 
spring and yet always doomed to imperma- 
nence and transiency. Even before we can 
have our heart's fill of the dandelions, they 
are gone; even before we are accustomed to 
the vanishing music of the birds, it has ceased 
for another year; and before we are attuned to 
beauty, that beauty is a thing of remembrance. 
Then, in the spring, who does not think of 
things that are never to return, — the hand- 
clasps of lovers, the conversations of our 
friends? Where is the princely comrade with 
whom we lunched at the country club last 

112 



April? Where is the loyal little companion 
who went Mayflowering with us last year? 
Last year? It is twenty years ago. It matters 
not, one year or twenty; the oblivion of the 
April rain has borne them all away, with their 
griefs and delirious joys, to the country over 
the hill where all the dead centuries have gone 
before them. 

When the hosts of the rain come back they 
do not bring the friends they led captive in 
former years. They come for some of us, and 
we, like the others, shall not return. Children 
of the dust, travelling with the wind, " Ah," 
we say, " if only the April days would tarry 
always! " or " If only June would stay! " It 
seems such a mal-adjustment of time, when 
there are twelve long months in the year, only 
to have one June! All the gray winter 
through, and even all through the spring, we 
are waiting for the June days, the perfection 
of the year, and when they come there is not 
time enough to apprehend them. June goes 
by every year like an express train, while we 

"3 



2TJ)e iitusfjip of Watttre 

stand dazed at some little siding. In splendour 
and power it sweeps by; a gasp of the breath 
as we attempt to realize its flight, and then 
June is gone, and there is only another dreary 
year ahead. It is only in June that life reaches 
its best, and yet he is a very fortunate man who 
gets four or five years of June in his lifetime. 
There are not six years of June in the appor- 
tioned three score and ten. And that seems 
a very modest amount of the perfection of 
summer for any mortal to possess, does it not? 
I know I shall never be reconciled to this ; but 
in the Elysian fields I am sure it is arranged 
differently. 

Well, the meaning of it all? What excuse 
can Providence have to offer for so niggardly 
a distribution of happiness through the year? 
Why so much ice of winter and so little wine 
of spring? Why not all June and roses? That 
is a babbler's question, and the babbler's 
answer is " We do not know." 

As the earth vibrates in her course from 
autumnal to vernal equinox our heart vibrates 

114 



lxtR>tt)1U 

between misgiving and elation. The long 
swing of the planets through their orbits is no 
more than a single beat of their endless vibra- 
tion. The pendulum of the sun has a longer 
arm than the pendulum of the kitchen clock, 
yet the law of rhythm holds in both. The 
moon glowing and darkening in the purple 
night and the firefly gleaming and then extin- 
guished in the meadow have different periods 
of rhythm, that is all. Not only music is 
rhythm, but all sound is rhythm. Colour, too, 
is rhythm, — the light rays of varying length 
in their vibrations. We are only made up of 
a mass of vibrations, all our senses being but 
so many variations of the power of perceiving 
and measuring rhythm. 

Rhythm is primarily motion from one point 
to another. This is the beginning of life, the 
first evidence of anything more potent than 
inert matter. You see how faithfully the 
rudimentary idea of rhythm is maintained in 
nature. In her most subtle and complex per- 
formances she never resigns that first mode of 

"5 



essential life, but does all things according to 
ordered rhythm and harmony. So that there 
could not be any June at one side of the Zodiac 
without December at the other. The year in 
its ebb and flow is the pulse-beat of the uni- 
verse. If I am depressed to-day I know I 
shall be elated to-morrow. And, as I under- 
stand nature, it is wisdom to use her kindly 
forces for our own good. In unhappiness, 
therefore, or distress, or misfortune, it is idle 
to curse or repine ; it is more sensible to abide, 
to wait until the earth has got round to the 
other side of her annual course and see how 
the event will appear from over there. 

If to-day we are having an era of war and 
greed and barbarism, by and by we shall have 
an era of art and civilization again. Our 
Mother Nature does not glide ahead like an 
empty apparition, but walks step by step, like 
any lovely human, constantly moving in 
rhythmic progress. 

We must not interfere with nature, to do 



116 



violence to her rhythm. We must not hold 
the pendulum back. But we shall best serve 
ourselves by serving the rhythmic tide of natu- 
ral force, taking the current as it turns, and 
enduring in patient faith when it is adverse. 
And we must notice how all our own small 
lives imitate the great pattern of Nature, going 
rhythmically forward and not steadily, from 
gloom to gladness, despair to elation, success 
to failure, and back to success again. This 
knowledge should make us more ready and 
willing to profit by the favouring periods, to 
throw ourselves into the opportunity with 
unreluctant zest, and also to endure with forti- 
tude the backward play of the rhythm of 
power within us. It should save us from ulti- 
mate hopelessness and the profoundness of 
despair. 

Since it is April, then, let me think most of 
the gladness and surging life of April, and 
let me not think sad thoughts on Easter eve. 
Let me have the confidence of all the spring 



117 



Wfje mmfyip ot Nature 

things, and abandon my spirit without a single 
fear or a moment's misgiving to the great, 
sure, benign power which walks the world this 
April day. 



118 



gprti in Coton 



&pril in Qoton 



As April draws to an end one finds the 
encompassment of streets and walls more and 
more irksome. As the sweet wind goes over 
the city roofs of a morning you look up into 
the pale warm spring sky and say, " Some- 
where there is more of this; I remember a 
world whose horizon was round and vague 
and far away; I recall the real red colour of 
the earth — yes, red and green, not this sickly 
gray of granite and asphalt. Where is that 
country? " And there comes to you Whit- 
man's great phrase, " Afoot and light-hearted, 
I take to the open road." The ancient imme- 
morial joy of a thousand departed Aprils 
stirs from its lurking sleep in those placid 
veins of yours, and would lure you away 

121 



5Ti)e liimi)i# of Nature 

beyond the limits of the town. It is the old 
spring fret that moved myriads of your fel- 
lows long before, and will move others when 
we are gone. But for the ample moment, the 
large sufficient now, our glad elasticity of 
spirit, our rapturous exhilaration of life, are 
as keen as if they were to be eternal. Indeed, 
they are the eternal part of us, of which we 
partake in these rare instants of existence. 

Then as the dim desire for change, the wild- 
ing wander-lust, shapes the spring-madness 
in our brain, the longing grows definite. The 
slumbering love of sea or mountain, marsh or 
dune or orchard land — places we have 
known, where we have really lived — puts off 
the lethargy of winter and kindles the pulses 
of the soul anew. How fruitless and wrong 
and ineffectual our tawdry city lives appear! 
Of what use is it to toil with so much dili- 
gence, to dress with such elaborate care? 
Surely we have been spending months in vain, 
when one soft spring morning can give our 
whole scheme of living the lie! Where is that 

122 



Mpvil in Soton 

bright hour when we loitered by the idle wash 
of a June tide along the coast of Maine, or 
that other memorable breathing-spell when 
we saw the frail circle of the harvest moon 
among the tall hill-birches? What became 
of the hermit thrush we once heard sending 
his anthem down the twilight of the firs, while 
the air was burdened with apple bloom? And 
where are those changing sea-pictures, with 
the white-sailed moving ships, which we used 
to watch from deep verandas through the 
lilac-trees? Ah, that is the greatest memory 
of all, — the summer sea! All its wonder is 
calling to us to-day, as we tarry in grimy 
routine and dyspeptic indolence. It almost 
seems as if one would be justified in breaking 
all obligations for the sake of a day by the 
shore, when the buds are unfolding. But if 
so great a rebellion as that cannot be excused, 
there are always the docks and the ferries and 
the ocean liners unlading in the East River. 
You may get a breath of freedom there at the 
expense of an idle hour any afternoon. 

123 



Careless JUatute 



©arele06 Hatutx 



AFTER all, Nature takes very little thought 
of herself. It is our human minds that are 
retrospective, brooding, careworn. One may 
question whether it were not better largely to 
forsake our habit of questioning and live more 
like the creatures. If wisdom lies inside the 
door of studious thought, madness is also sleep- 
ing there; and the mortal who knocks does 
so at his peril. We may become as gods to 
know good from evil; but are we sure that 
happiness inheres in that knowledge? 

Once having turned his gaze inward, and 
discovered himself, man is in the perplexity 
of those adventurous souls who leave the old 
world and emigrate to the new. Having 
come to their destination, the novelty and 

127 



Stye mnuWp of Watutr* 

spirit and brightness of the fresh life fascinate 
and hold them for a time ; then they tire of it, 
and long for the old home, where they are sure 
they will be happy once more. The same rest- 
less longing that sent them forth on the quest, 
sends them back again, seekers still. So " over 
the sea the thousand miles " they fare after a 
few years, with their hearts set on the old 
ways, the old customs, the old friendships, the 
old simple life. Do they find it? Not at all. 
The old country is not only different from the 
new; it is different from its old self; it has 
changed, they think, while they were away. 
And yet it has not changed; it is they them- 
selves who have been changed by their experi- 
ence. For it is not altogether true that " coelum 
non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt; " 
and travel does unfold and modify the mind. 
Having beheld new worlds, we cannot be as 
we were before. So our emigrants find them- 
selves as dissatisfied with the old home as 
they were with the new. Thenceforth they 
live for ever the victims of distraction, 

T28 



touched with uneasiness if they remain in the 
old world, not wholly at rest if they reemigrate 
to the new. 

Is this our mortal predicament since we left 
the green world of nature and entered the 
gray world of thought? Do we not every day 
long to return, and tell ourselves tales of the 
sweet simplicity of that natural life? Do we 
not profess to despise the self-conscious and 
introspective existence? And what is our love 
of the trees and the birds, the sea and the hills 
and out-of-doors, but a hankering for the old 
creature life? 

Go into the park or the woods any morn- 
ing now, and listen until you hear a single 
rainbird soloing plaintively above the dimmer 
sounds. At that one touch of wild wood 
magic, how uncontemporaneous and primi- 
tive we become! How little matter our 
worldly state, our clothes and carriages, our 
bills and bank accounts! That is a strain 
which pierces to the heart and plays upon the 
soul. It finds us as we are, not as we seem. 

129 



STfje mnuWv of Waturt 

And unless we are wholly corrupted and sod- 
den with civilization, it wakens glimmerings 
of the golden age within us, making us 

" walk the earth in rapture ; 
Making those who catch God's secret 
Just so much more prize their capture." 

As that pealing cadence thrills on the damp 
air, the world is renewed for us; we pass 
backward a thousand years to the morning of 
earth, before care and sorrows were begotten, 
before ever we bethought ourselves of retro- 
spect or inquiry. 



130 



%%t ^anfcering ^otfj 



Qfyz Waribttin$ Wotb 



Sometimes it seems as if words were the 
only realities, as if everything else were fleet- 
ing and perishable as dew. We say in house- 
hold phrase that the word that is written re- 
mains, and we think of our heritage of litera- 
ture. But the unwritten word has an inde- 
structible life as well. 

In the Old Book, where the story of the 
creation is told, how the heavens and the earth 
were made in the beginning, it is written 
" God said." No other way of promulgating 
the vast elemental fiat could occur to the 
imagination. By simple word of mouth the 
revolving firmament was created, so that beau- 
tiful poem has it; and the conception is a 
tribute to the power of the word. When you 

l 33 



SJje mitisijfjj of Mature 

come to revise that primitive notion, and sub- 
stitute for it some slow gigantic idea of evo- 
lution, rational but ponderous and lumbering, 
much of the wonder at first escapes. The 
process seems so logical, the periods of time 
are so immeasurably enormous, that one 
hardly travels back to " in the beginning; " 
the mind is so sufficiently occupied with the 
revelations of scientific method, it does not 
note the old ever-present marvel. For the 
sphinx has only retreated behind another 
question; and our solution of the riddle has 
been found in terms of still another conun- 
drum. 

Follow the evolutionary idea, the new idea 
of the creation, to its limits, and there the 
ancient wonder resides as fresh and inscrut- 
ably smiling as it was in the Hebrew poem. 
The reason at last runs back to the power of 
the word. For, think of the infinite tribes of 
the earth and the sea, and the breeds of the 
air; if no voice said, " Let these creatures 
appear, each after its kind," they must have 

134 



said to each other, " Let us go forth and pos- 
sess the earth ; " or at least they must have 
said to themselves, each in his heart, " Go to, 
I will become." A world without words is 
an unthinkable world. 

And, again, in the New Book you may read 
" In the beginning was the word, and the 
word was with God, and the word was God." 
This is a more illumined, modern, and sym- 
bolistic way of saying the same thing that 
the author of the first chapter of Genesis said. 
There was no time, it seems to imply, when 
expression and the power of communication 
did not exist; more than that, there never was 
a time when anything more potent than a 
word held sway over being. In the Scots 
usage, " The word is with you," shifts the 
obligation from speaker to hearer, and places 
the credit where it is due. And in the phrase, 
" The word was with God," I read the attri- 
bution of all moral force. Also, if " the word 
was God," and God is unchanging, the word 
is still Lord of the Earth. Thought, senti- 

l 3S 



£ijt mnnt)i» of TSTatutre 

ment, desire, these are our rulers, and they 
have their only embodiment in expression. It 
is by the help of the wandering word that they 
hold sway and move in power. 

Before the written speech was the sound 
of the voice, prevailing, urging, convincing, 
obtaining the individual's wish and swaying 
multitudes to a single will. Then with print- 
ing came the multiplying of the word, the 
increase of the powers of the unseen. All of 
the fine arts are only differing phases of the 
word; they are only so many modes of ex- 
pression, signals of the spirit across gulfs of 
silence. And our Titan of the century, me- 
chanical invention, what is the end of all its 
labour but to bring men face to face more 
rapidly, that they may speak what they know, 
or to carry their thought abroad with the 
swiftness of light? 

So now, when the vernal sun is warming the 
earth, and April is spreading up the sloping 
world with resurrection, by what magic is the 
transformation wrought? In the dim nether 

136 



glooms of the deep sea all the fin people have 
received the summons; the unrest has taken 
hold of them, — the fever of migration; and 
the myriad hosts from the green Floridian 
water and azure Carib calms gather and 
move; surely and swiftly they come, through 
the soundless, trackless spaces under the 
broken whitish day, up to the cool fresh rivers 
and the pools of the North. How did they 
know the date? By instinct? But what is 
that? The communication came to them, in- 
explicably as it comes to us, — the unuttered 
word, the presage, the portent. And their 
brothers the birds, too; already they are here, 
hard on the heels of the retreating frost, every 
tribe with its cohorts full and overflowing; 
from tree to tree, from state to state, the long 
unnoted procession comes up through the 
night. How they started, how they guessed 
the hour of departure, we can only dimly sur- 
mise. Their movements are as mysterious as 
our own, their whim as undiscoverable. Yet 
to them, too, the message must have gone 

137 



art)* mnuftip of Watttrt 

abroad. To say that the word went forth 
among them is to use the simplest and most 
elemental imagery. 

The word is that which has both meaning 
and melody, both sense and semblance; it is 
that which informs us; it is neither matter 
alone, nor spirit alone, but the dual manifesta- 
tion of the two in one. It is the symbol of the 
universe that we perceive, and the universe 
that we are. The Word is the Lord of Crea- 
tion, the unresting master of life, the great 
vagabond, our substantial brother and ghostly 
friend. 

I knew a man who was a writer by trade, 
and one day in conversation I heard a friend 
say to him in the course of their talk, " Don't 
you really love a word better than anything 
else in the world?" But this monstrous no- 
tion he stoutly repudiated, almost with indig- 
nation, I thought. Years afterward, however, 
he reminded me of the incident, and said that 
he had never quite escaped from that sugges- 
tion, — that he often feared it was true. 

138 



Cfje ^jfrimtisfnp of Mature 



Qfyt $ wtttoijtp ofM&tmz 



Is not our love of Nature only the sentiment 
of abounding vitality and rugged self-reli- 
ance? In his prime a man is unacquainted 
with fear, his look is outward upon the bright 
changing face of the earth, so fresh, so beau- 
tiful, so untouched by time, so vigorous, so 
unafraid. He may have a genius for society 
and spend his useful life in one of a thousand 
glittering successful ways, with hardly a 
thought for nature; or he may have a genius 
for solitude and introspection, and walk apart 
from his fellows, " a lover of the forest ways." 
The trees and the hills may appeal to him, 
and the sea tell him wonderful stories with 
its old monotonous voice, so that he is content 
and even happy by himself with little human 

141 



companionship. To-day is enough for him; 
the birds are his musicians, and he has said 
in his heart, " I will commune with the Great 
Mother." And so long as he is young and 
well, with that temperament, his solitary 
habit may suffice, and in lonely silence he 
may find solace for the common griefs and 
disappointments of men. 

But let him fall for an hour below the 
normal level of health, let the sudden sweeping 
cut of sickness come upon him, and the pith 
of all his brave credulity will melt away. His 
adored monitor and mistress cannot break her 
adamantine silence for the sake of one poor 
mortal; he no longer finds in her countenance 
the sympathy he fancied was resident there; in 
truth it was no more than the shadow of his 
own exceeding great desire and superabun- 
dant vitality; and now that the need of help 
or sympathy or understanding is come, he 
must turn to his own kind. 

There is in reality a power in Nature to 
rest and console us; but few are so strong as 

14a 



W tfvituXlt$t)ip of Katttrt 

to be able to rely on that lonely beneficence ; 
and we must seek the gentler aid of our fellow 
beings. Indeed, only those who are humane 
at heart can rightly hear the obscure word of 
Nature; while those who have been reared 
not far from the wild school of the forest 
make the best citizens and friends. 

Perhaps the greatest boon that we can re- 
ceive from Nature is health. Our friendship 
with her should give us sanity first of all. The 
strain of life in these days in our cities is apt 
to become excessive in two directions: We are 
apt to become wholly engrossed in affairs and 
suffer from sheer physical exhaustion, or we 
may become too completely and dangerously 
detached from the current interests of exist- 
ence. Either one may mean madness and 
death. But a daily contact with the elements, 
with elemental conditions of being — sun- 
shine, and rain, and roads, and honest grass, 
and the swish of winds in the trees — is a 
sedative and tonic in one. To know the kind- 
liness of Nature we must take constant care to 

143 



2TJje iiimi)iv of Watttt* 

abide by her customs, not to hurry over duty 
nor to tarry too long, but to move with the 
appointed rhythm she has bestowed upon us, 
each man true to his own measure, and so in 
accord with his fellows and not at variance 
with the purpose of creation. 



144 



^unconscious 8rt 



Sufaottarimts &rt 



There is a general recognition of the fact, 
but no clear comprehension of the power, of 
subconsciousness expressing itself in various 
forms of art. We readily recognize in a 
painting, a poem, a piece of music, the pres- 
ence of a force (" a something " we are likely 
to call it), which we do not readily define. 
We say perhaps that the picture has soul; it 
sways us, we know not why; it allures us, we 
cannot tell how. A too exact critic might per- 
haps ridicule our susceptibility to a vague 
charm we could not pretend to understand. 
His very philosophic and rational mind would 
insist on clarity, on deflniteness. For him the 
painting must be logical, conclusive, limpid. 
But somehow, we say, we do not care whether 

*47 



it means anything or not, so long as it moves 
us pleasurably. We can enjoy Browning's 
" Child Roland " or William Morris's " Blue 
Closet " without asking what they mean. And 
we are right, too. Art does not always have 
to mean something obvious. Some poetry is 
addressed to the mind and some is not. The 
best poetry, of course, addresses the mind and 
emotions as well. But just as a deal of good 
poetry has been written which appeals chiefly 
to the rational self in us (nearly all of Pope 
and Dryden, for example), so a good deal 
has been written which appeals to our irra- 
tional instinctive self. And indeed, in all 
poetry, even the most rational, there are cer- 
tain qualities which pass the threshold of the 
outer mind and pass in to sway the mysterious 
subconscious person who inhabits us. 

The most obvious of the qualities in poetry, 
is the metre or rhythm. The measure of verse 
has an influence on us beyond our reckoning, 
potent and ever present, though unrecognized. 
So that the simplest, most unexalted statement 

148 



Sttfiamsciims art 

of truth, commonplace though it be, if once 
thrown into regular verse, comes to us with 
an added force. Perhaps I should say with 
a new force. It may not make a statement 
any plainer to our mind, to versify it; it may 
not make it any stronger mentally; but it gives 
it a power and influence of a sort it did not 
possess before. This added power is one of 
the things that distinguish poetry from prose, 
— art from science. Now the principle of re- 
currence is the underlying principle of rhythm 
and metre and rhyme and alliteration. And 
I wonder whether this constant reiteration, 
this regular pulsing recurrence in poetry, does 
not act as a mesmeric or hypnotic agent. 

It is quite true that good art is the expres- 
sion, not only of the rational waking objective 
self, the self which is clever and intentional 
and inductive, but of the deeper unreasoning 
self, as well. It is also true that good art 
impresses the deeper as well as the shallower 
self. The outer objective self may be ex- 
tremely brilliant, may master technique and 

149 



2TJ)e mmsJjtjp of Watttrt 

become skilled in every lore of the craft, may, 
indeed, become as masterful in execution as 
the masters themselves, and yet if it have not 
the aid of a great strong inner subjective, un- 
conscious self, it can do nothing of permanent 
human interest. You know how accurate a 
draughtsman may be, and how learned in 
anatomy, and yet how dismal and uninspired 
his paintings after all. You know what bril- 
liant execution a pianist may have, and yet 
how cold his recitals may leave you. This is 
the achievement of intentional mind unas- 
sisted by the subconscious spirit. And neces- 
sary as it is, it is not alone sufficient. 

To attain the best results in art we must 
have both the personalities of the artist work- 
ing at once. All the skill which training and 
study can give must be at his command, to 
serve as the alphabet or medium of his art, 
and at the same time the submerged, unsleep- 
ing self must be set free for active creation. 
Scientific formulae are an admirable means of 
communication between mind and mind, but 

150 



art is a means of communication for the whole 
being, — mind, body and spirit. 

This being so, it is necessary, in doing any 
creative work, to cultivate the power of sub- 
merging our useful, objective self far enough 
to give free play to the greater subjective self, 
the self beyond the threshold. This is exactly 
what occurs in hypnosis, and I dare say the 
beat and rhythm of poetry serves just such a 
purpose. 

u Dearest, three months ago, 
When the mesmerizer Snow 
With his hand's first sweep 
Put the earth to sleep — " 

In these lines of Browning's there resides, I 
am certain, a power like that that he describes. 
It resides in all poetry. It is the magic we feel 
but cannot fathom, the charm we must follow, 
discredit it as we may. 

Apply this test to any good piece of poetry 
of which you are fond. Take Tennyson's 
" Crossing the Bar," for instance. That poem 
appeals to our mind with a definite idea, a 



Stye mtusijip of TSTature 

definite image, which you may easily trans- 
pose into prose. The poem might be trans- 
lated without loss of the thought. But what 
of the magic charm of the lines: 

" For though the flood may bear me beyond the bound- 
ary of time, 

I hope to see my Pilot's face when I shall have crossed 
the bar." 

I have not altered the thought, but I have 
destroyed the stanza. The spell has vanished 
with the metre. The reason that Tennyson's 
verse is more pleasing than our mangled ver- 
sion of it is this — simply that it speaks to us 
more completely. It not only appeals to our 
intelligence, but it appeals to our sense and 
soul as well. The soul has memories of regions 
and lives of which we have never heard. The 
soul dwells with us as tacitly as a silent com- 
panion who should share our habitation for 
years, yet never reveal the secrets of his earlier 
life. And good poetry and good art have 
much to say to this work-a-day understanding 

152 



Subconscious &rt 

of ours ; yet they have more to say to the soul 
within us, which comprehends everything. 
The difficulty is in obtaining access to the 
soul and securing egress for it. The creative 
artist must subordinate cunning to intuition, 
and he must embody his beautiful creations in 
some form that will be able to elude the too 
vigilant reason of his fellows and gain instant 
access to their spirit. 

If I were a poet I should not merely wish 
to set down my conclusions about life and the 
universe; I could accomplish that better by 
being a trained philosopher. I should not 
merely want to convey to you new and impor- 
tant facts of nature; I could do that better 
by being a scientist. I should not want to con- 
vince your mind only, for I could do that bet- 
ter by logic and rhetoric. But I should wish 
to do all these things and to win your sympa- 
thy as well. I should not only wish to make 
you believe what I say, but to believe it pas- 
sionately, — with your whole heart. In order 
to do this I should have to secure free com- 

*53 



munication of spirit, as well as of mind. I 
should not only have to satisfy reason, I 
should have to lull and charm it. I should 
have to hypnotize that good warder of your 
house before he would allow me to enter. Just 
as I had to mesmerize myself with the cadence 
of my lines before I could fully make them 
express my whole nature, so you in vour turn 
as reader would have to feel their undefinable 
magic before you could appreciate and enjoy 
my poems to the utmost capacity of your na- 
ture. I could only secure this result through 
the senses, through the monotonous music of 
my verse. 

This may seem to you nothing more than the 
wisdom of the snake-charmer. Well, that is 
all it is. But that is enough. 



*54 



gtafcoatfj attti ^tlltoarti 



Seaioartr atrtr iiiltoartr 



If it ever happens to you to pass quickly 
from the sea to the mountains, and if you care 
to note the subtler psychical phenomena, I 
am sure you must have experienced more than 
the gross change of air; you must have been 
conscious of a translation from the emotional 
realm to the realm of pure thought, from the 
region of feeling to the region of mentality. 

That there are three and only three zones 
of life, the physical, the mental, and the spir- 
itual, is quite certain; and that the last two 
of these correspond to the zones of ocean and 
hill, I think very probable; but whether the 
other, the physical zone, corresponds to the 
zone of plain and level, I am not so sure. 

157 



arjjt mmfyip of Katute 

Think, however, how evidently true it is 
that the sea is the great nourisher of imagina- 
tion, the stimulator of romance, and how all 
her border people have been the originators 
and creative artists of the world. There is 
something in the sea's air which breeds emo- 
tion; it is strong and vitalizing; those who 
breathe it have bulk and stamina; while the 
dwellers on mountains must content them- 
selves with the thin dry stimulant which 
blows between their pine slopes. Your hills- 
man is proverbially lanky, more a creature of 
moods than of passions; and in the elemental 
sorrow which seems to invest him, you may 
detect the overweight of thought, the lack of 
emotion. For generations aloof from the 
business of the world below him, he has main- 
tained the solitary and egocentric life; he has 
found little outlet for his selfhood either in 
action or passion; the free intercourse with 
his kind has been lacking; and that portion of 
his nature which flourishes most easily alone, 
the mental part of him, has held its own un- 

i 5 8 



diminished and undiverted existence, com- 
menting with the lofty solitude about it and 
brooding through vast stretches of leisurely 
silence on its own being. He is become the 
shy, sensitive, individualized creature to 
whom sociability is a panic, and achievement 
a miracle. He undertakes almost nothing and 
accomplishes still less. A hunter and trapper 
all his days, he is willing to do with a bare 
subsistence, if only he be not forced to mingle 
with men, to merge his identity with that of 
his fellow, to pass from his own wilding 
sphere, into the hurly-burly of competition 
and association. The advance of civilization 
leaves him out; he watches with bright eyes 
from his roadside solitude, while the pageant 
of progress goes by with dust and blare. If 
he ever found a voice, he would be the prince 
of critics. That cold, dry nature would sit 
unmoved to judge the tumultuous events about 
him. He would see the outcome and signifi- 
cance of that strenuous process of develop- 
ment, which he is so ill-fitted to share. Others, 

159 



STfj* l%inzi)i» of TSTatttte 

with their full, ruddy life, would originate a 
thousand works of beauty and utility, while 
he still dreamed; but at the last their hasty 
activities and imperfect aims would come 
under his judicial view for blame or com- 
mendation, — the affairs of action and the af- 
fairs of sentiment brought to the ultimate test 
of implacable reason. 

Not so with your dweller by the bountiful 
sea. With the world's blue highway leading 
past his door, with the traffic of the nations 
of the earth going forward continually under 
his blue eyes, this man is no solitary. His 
power of detachment is small. He is a spec- 
tator, indeed, of the tragedies of storm and the 
endless drama of the tideways of the deep, 
but he seldom can refrain from taking part 
in that fascinating and enormous play. From 
a child he is accustomed to ships, and his 
nursery tales are stories of adventure. The 
sunlit and limitless highroads call him eter- 
nally to vaster chances and unexplored lands. 
The strange new tokens of foreign people 

1 60 



come home in his father's chests; his daily 
walk is among innumerable reminders of 
civilizations and customs not his own. To 
live the inward, secluded life solely is not 
possible to this child of seafarers; his emo- 
tions are enlisted strongly in the doings of his 
kind at home and over sea; the life he knows 
is not a mere tissue of mental phenomena, a 
panorama running before his mind; it has 
a grip on his vitals; his emotional experience 
is full; and from that fulness of rich being 
there spring the unnumbered creations of the 
active spirit. It were impossible for so abun- 
dant an enrichment of the character not to 
find vent in the flowering of expression, not 
to embody itself in art. 

The Greeks, the Venetians, the French, the 
English, — these masters of the sea have been 
the masters of artistic creation as well. And 
their wonderful contributions to the treasure- 
house of the world are not to be matched by 
any mountain folk whatever. So much one 



161 



2TJ)* litUStJMp Of Nature 

may deduce from history; and I am inclined 
to believe that a careful consideration of per- 
sonal experience would confirm an idea which 
may seem a trifle fanciful at first. 



162 



Cfje Courtesy of Mature 



Cije ©ottrtestj of Hature 



Perhaps one of the things that charm us 
most, as we come back each year to the green 
world out of the stress of our city life, is the 
great courtesy of nature, if one may call it 
so. For her laws, though inexorable, and even 
ruthless at times, are none the less gentle. I 
doubt if there is cruelty in nature. We must 
wait until man appears and evil is born into 
the world, before we find anything of malice 
or greed in creation. 

It is truly a state of war, in which all the 
wild things live, whether they dress in leaf 
or skin, fur, feather, bark, or scale. The un- 
ceasing struggle for self-preservation and the 
perpetuation of kind is veiled but real. And 

165 



arjje fiiustjtfl of Mature 

great nature, which looks to the casual eye so 
calm, so unstirring, so saturated with content 
and repose and the essence of peace, is actually 
in hourly ferment of strife. To our house- 
bred sentiment, it seems a pathetic thing that 
every wild creature should die a violent death. 
But, after all, what better fate could befall 
it than to render its life up for the preserva- 
tion of other life more complex, more active, 
more intelligent than its own? It is only man 
who kills wantonly. The beasts that live by 
killing kill only as hunger bids. 

I think we feel the influence of such natural 
benignity in our pleasures of the open air. 
One may say, without being misanthropic, that 
the greatest joy in nature is the absence of 
man. For in our retreat to the woods we 
escape what is basest in ourselves; our fellow 
mortals are not thrust upon us so closely; we 
have room and time to choose our compan- 
ions ; and we forget for awhile the cruelty of 
fear and greed. 

I know the theme is deeper than I can go. 
166 



2Tf)* €outrtes» of Nature 

The great dilemma of humanity is not to be 
solved offhand. And there remains, after all, 
our hand-to-hand strife for a living, in which 
the weak go to the wall. I do think, however, 
that we might learn a lesson from that great 
nature which seems so impersonal, and some- 
times so reckless of life. We might learn the 
courtesy of tolerance. 

Here is our city life, our modern modus 
vivendi, mitigate it as w 7 e please, a veiled yet 
ruthless encounter man to man, — a strife to 
the death. You may cushion your pews and 
deaden your walls, and replenish your table 
from the ends of the earth; you may lull 
yourself with sermons and salve your con- 
science by founding charlatan colleges and 
establishing impertinent charities; but the 
fact remains that men and women are being 
worked to death in order that you and I may 
have our luxuries. 

"Well, what then? This is no more than 
happens in a state of nature," you say. Yes, 
it is more. For in nature one is content with 

167 



enough; in civilization one is never content. 
One of the chief characteristics that we seem 
to have brought with us from an earlier stage 
of existence is the baleful heritage of fear. 
Indeed w T e seem to have cherished and de- 
veloped it past all need. It is fear that is 
at the root of all cruelty and greed, the two 
evils that most disgrace the life of man. 
Under primitive conditions, the dangers to life 
are greater, and the chances of security less; 
so that it behooves the savage to go warily. 
Fear is his vigilant warden. But as he makes 
progress toward the amenities of a more civi- 
lized existence, surely, one might suppose, 
fear would be the first trait he would lose. 
For the first great boon of his advancement 
must be immunity from danger. The first 
good that comes to him from combining in a 
recognized structure of society, how T ever 
crude, must be security of life. He can have 
less and less need of fear as a delicate instant 
monitor for self-preservation. Unfortunately, 
this is not so. Instead of laying aside fear, 

168 



2TJje <&ouvtt&8 of Mature 

we have developed new desires, absurd and 
unthought-of requirements, that can only be 
satisfied, as they increase, by ever-increasing 
acquisitions of property and stores of wealth 
wrung from the earth. Nor is this enough; 
we are still not satisfied with what we can 
earn by labour; we must plunder from our 
weaker fellows, outwitting them in relentless 
guile ; until in the midst of plenty the struggle 
for a bare existence is as fierce as it ever was 
among the tribes of our predecessors. 

Very likely this vigorous process of social 
and individual evolution is productive of 
some good qualities; we are not likely to be- 
come lazy under it; none the less it seems to 
common sense terribly wasteful, as wasteful 
as the processes of nature. And if we are 
not to devise means to better nature, if we are 
not to use our intelligence for purposes more 
benign than those of the pre-human and sub- 
human creation, I can form no notion of the 
proper use of mind at all. You may tell me 
that the inexorable law of nature has pro- 

169 



&\)t mmfyip of TSTatttre 

vided for progress by the simple means of 
preserving the fittest to survive, and that in 
human society we merely follow the same 
methods. But I say that the laws of nature 
can offer the soul no criterion for conduct I 
only exist to temper the occurrences of nature, 
to deflect them to my own needs, and to alter 
my own human nature continually for the 
better. I do not know what the soul is, but 
I know that it exists; and I know that its 
admonitions form a more beautiful sanction 
for conduct than the primitive code of evolu- 
tion taken alone. But I do not believe that in 
our finer moments we shall find any fault 
with nature, though we shall find a taint in 
ourselves. I believe that we must in a large 
measure reverse the law of selection when 
we reach human society, but that at the same 
time we must remain nearer to nature in many 
ways than we are accustomed to do. 

I do not see any greed in nature. I do not 
find any creature fighting for more than it 
actually needs at the moment. I do not see 

170 



2Ti)e &ouvtt*8 of Watute 

any cruelty in nature, any wanton destruction, 
except among those primitive voters, our ar- 
boreal ancestors, the apes. But that is the 
taint of human ingenuity beginning to ap- 
pear. I find in the world of green unflinching 
responsibility, abiding perdurable patience, 
and a courtesy that is too large, too sure, for 
the cruelty and greed of man. 



171 



Cfje lUtjcurp of Bring $oor 



€%e Ctwim} ofMtin^oot 



AT first thought you would say that the 
luxury of being poor, like the luxury of going 
barefoot, is only a luxury when it is not a 
necessity. But that statement is too epigram- 
matic for the sober truth. And truth is a god- 
dess whose beauty best appears in diaphanous 
simplicity, without the oriental broideries of 
the too curious and too civilized mind. It is 
nearer the truth to say that as there is always 
an actual luxury in going barefoot, so there 
always is an actual luxury in being poor. If 
we do not always relish being poor, it is be- 
cause we do not appreciate our blessings. 

I am sorry for any one who cannot afford 
to be poor. Certainly to enjoy the luxury to 
the fullest extent one must be a gentleman or 

175 



2Tf)t irtusfjij) of Katur* 

a genius. But even without either of these 
advantages there is cause for thanksgiving in 
a modest amount of poverty. If you are poor, 
think of the endless burden of impediments of 
all sorts you escape from day to day, — houses, 
servants, tailors, teas, — a thousand cares and 
annoyances which press upon the rich and 
crush them back into the fat clay from which 
they came. There are rich people who are 
good, and there are rich people who are 
happy, but they are so at how great a cost! 
It is the old story of the savage over again. 
"Why don't you work?" "What for?" 
" So that you may be rich." " Why should I 
wish to be rich?" "So that you need do 
nothing." " But I do nothing now." 

If you are rich you cannot be free. You 
have obligations you cannot shirk. But the 
greatest freedom of the poor is the freedom 
of spirit. If I am poor, I am not obliged to 
be always on parade, always living at a ten- 
sion, always presenting an appearance. My 
outward circumstance is so insignificant that 

176 



I can forget it altogether and occupy my mind 
with the higher life. That is why it is good 
for a philosopher to be poor, — he has noth- 
ing to divert him from his noblest self. He 
may have the luxury of a free and untram- 
melled life. Voluntary poverty, such as that 
of the ecclesiastical orders, is a great positive 
virtue and a means of happiness. The mere 
act of renunciation in itself is no virtue. If 
you forego the pleasure of a new gown, and 
still keep hankering after it, that is no virtue, 
and does you little good. But if you abstain 
from buying it, saying to yourself, " Thank 
Heaven, I am free from one more encum- 
brance," you are already on the road to the 
Celestial City. 

In order to have the goods of this world 
you must be strenuous, unsleeping, given to 
hard work. You must will and energize day 
in and day out. You must impose your way 
on others, and bend them to your purpose. 
You must strive and never rest. (Unless, of 
course, you are dishonest, and make your 

177 



art)* mn&fyip of Xatttre 

money instead of earning it.) And for most 
people who are cast into the world with re- 
sponsibility already upon them, such a life 
of endeavour is necessary. Others may be 
depending upon them, — the aged, the help- 
less, the unfortunate. They cannot shun the 
demands of humanity. They dare not indulge 
their own love of freedom. They cannot 
afford to be poor. 

But if no one worked, we should have few 
of the decencies of life, our climate being 
what it is. Yes, I know that. I am not cham- 
pioning any fundamental philosophy. I am 
only insisting that we do not appreciate the 
luxury of freedom there is in poverty. 

Cease to worry. Do not try to reason your- 
self into submission. Just dismiss your will 
entirely. Let it go out and play. Forget it. 
Then you may truly begin to live the greater 
life. Your own inner truer personality will 
have time and space to grow. You will 
breathe more freely and feel yourself a part 
of larger life. If poverty only makes us 

178 



2TJ)* VLuvuvg of Unnfl $oor 

strive the harder (not work, but strive) then 
it is a curse and not a blessing. But that 
depends on our own mind. To be able to 
enjoy this beautiful earth and our strange, 
rich, wonderful life, it is necessary to be free, 
to keep a spirit untrammelled by outward 
things and untarnished by error. To be 
soured by poverty or to be hardened by it is 
a mistake, an error of thought. Instead of 
enjoying our life, we are cramping ourselves. 
It is just as if we were set at a feast and sulkily 
refused to enjoy a few dishes because we could 
not reach everything on the table and make 
ourselves sick, like foolish children that we 
are. 

Children do not mind poverty. It is not 
until they grow and cultivate their wilful 
individuality, that unhappiness and discontent 
overtake them. It is in their disregard of cir- 
cumstance that we still may imitate them. 
They enjoy being barefoot and having noth- 
ing, until some mistaken grown-up makes 
them ashamed of it. 

179 



2TJje fcfusljfjp of feature 

O artist, know that unless you can afford to 
be poor, you can never reach the full height 
of your power. You can never abandon strife, 
and insistence, and your own small worldly 
will. You can never be merged into the 
greater sweep of being whence inspiration 
flows. 

Do you tell me that competition and strug- 
gle are necessary to make you produce your 
best? If that is the mainspring of your art, 
is your art all it might be? Are you not 
merely an artisan? If you were an artist, you 
would sit down in supreme contentment and 
rags, painting for the joy of it alone. If you 
could afford never to sell a picture your work 
would be ten times as good as it is, and it 
would grow better every year. The brooding 
soul ripens; the anxious mind withers and 
blights. It is not good for you to live richly 
in cities, because it is hard to deny yourself. 
You must first be poor and lonely and de- 
jected ; then you must think of the luxury of 
your freedom; so you will enter into posses- 

180 



ED* Uuvuv$ of mixta poor 

sion of yourself; and you will be glad and 
free and creative and strong. There is no 
other gladness; there is no other freedom; 
there is no other greatness. 



181 



•♦ g>olttarp tije Cfjrusf) " 



"Solttan) tije ffi&rorif 



From where I happen to be sitting this 
afternoon there is nothing in the world but 
trees and birds. One measure of a man is his 
capacity for enduring solitude. I should be 
sorry to predict anything of a character from 
this knowledge alone; though there are fa- 
miliar quotations on the subject. Certainly 
a little solitude now and again is good for most 
of us. It lets our busy, every-day, toiling, 
anxious self have a respite; and it gives our 
deeper, more serene self a chance to be heard. 
In solitary moments the stress of life is light- 
ened or removed altogether, and we possess 
our souls (after a little practice) in enduring 
calm. Indeed, I fancy the expert in solitude 
brings home from his radiant contemplation 

185 



&t)ir mtwtiip of Nature 

a fund of joyful patience to serve him in 
stormy hours. The wildest confusion of cir- 
cumstance, the direst calamity, are powerless 
to undo him quite. Even under sorrow and 
irreparable grief he retains something of the 
great primal tolerance and unshaken solidity 
of nature. 

For it is when we are most alone and with- 
drawn into our profounder selves that we are 
most completely in accord with the spirit of 
the universe, by whatever name it may be 
called. So that he who takes time to be alone 
occasionally is in reality preparing himself 
for meeting his fellows with greater sympathy 
and understanding. When we allow ourselves 
to be engrossed unceasingly in the smaller 
outward, trivial details of existence, and in 
superficial human intercourse, we lose our 
power of approaching our friends through 
the profounder channels of sympathy and 
appreciation. We become so thoroughly ha- 
bituated to living on the surface that we seem 
to have no core of being left in us. This is 

186 



♦ 4 



Solitary ttje EftrttsJ)" 



the real cause of the vapidity of society. 
Human intercourse, very likely, is the crown- 
ing end and aim of nature. But that implies 
human nature at its best, and we cannot too 
constantly be giving ourselves away without 
replenishing our individuality from that 
deeper intercourse which solitude affords. 

But the great beautiful wildernesses of the 
earth are not the only regions where solitude 
may be sought. The world of art and the 
world of religion will serve equally well for 
our retirement. 

For the past hour a brown thrush has been 
fluting in the thicket here, inducing the most 
thoughtless to meditation. Why is it that his 
song seems so entrancing to us? Is it not be- 
cause on hearing it we are arrested midway in 
our occupation, and invited to partake of the 
silence while we expectantly await the next 
burst of the golden notes? It is the same 
hypnotic power that charms us in music; it 
stills our superficial, unnecessary self and al- 
lows our wiser, deeper self a moment or an 

187 



8Ef)e 2iiu8l)fp of Ttfatttte 

hour of freedom. Music is the most primitive 
and widely beloved of the arts; and it is one 
of the most powerful for this reason. 

" I can always leave off talking, when I 
hear a master play." 

Again, when a great drama is on the boards, 
there is all the direct appeal of its beautiful 
story and setting, the enlisting of our atten- 
tion, the ennobling and intensifying of our 
sentiment; but at the same time there is the 
no less potent, though unnoted, spell of si- 
lence it is casting over us. We grow still to 
listen, and as we are absorbed in the spectacle, 
spirit finds its opportunity for unstifled 
growth. This may even be the great function 
of sleep ; we do not know. Certainly we can 
rest perfectly well without sleep. Perhaps 
sleep comes from the soul's imperative de- 
mand for solitude, its need for intercourse 
with some spiritual profundity from which it 
springs. 

In all our more obvious existence, our physi- 
cal and mental existence, too much solitude 

t88 



44 



Solitary tlje Entrust) 



is a dangerous menace. It is only in com- 
munity of life that sanity and health are 
maintained. For, superior and noble as the 
spiritual part of man is, it is too simple, too 
unworldly, to be entrusted with the control of 
affairs here and now, perhaps. So that while 
solitude is supremely important, it is not ex- 
clusively so. But that is a caution few of us 
need. For the most part, we are too absorbed 
with the loaves and fishes to be at all curious 
about the miracle. 

Let me, then, learn to cultivate a taste for 
solitude. And for this, one need not be 
morose nor anti-social; for as solitude is not 
a physical need, so it may be had even in com- 
pany. But repose of mind, if it is not quite 
solitary, is at least a tendency toward solitude. 
It is only in reticence that speech gathers 
force; it is only from rest that activity can 
arise. So it is only by being sometimes alone 
that we can ever be fit for friendship, com- 
panionship, or love. 

So the thrush may chant for you from his 
189 



2TJje mml)ip of Mature 

green sanctuary for half a day and send you 
back strangely elated and encouraged for new 
endeavour. These vague suggestions which I 
have set down as he sang may be quite value- 
less, and you, when you hear him, may have 
entirely different thoughts. It does not mat- 
ter at all. We shall both have profited as we 
could by the engrossing music of the forest. 
And these crude ephemeral words will no 
more be lost than are his liquid notes in the 
deep ravine. They have served to embody 
for me my own hour of tranquillity. You, 
when you come to the woods, will find your 
own suitable words more appropriate and 
fresh than these. For, though this afternoon 
and its sylvan melody have perished in the 
shadows of the mountains, you, when you 
arrive, shall find others as fair and significant 
awaiting you. 



190 



Cms 



Crees 



Flowers are so small, so easily cultivated, 
so personal, so brilliant, that they have gained 
almost more than their share of human atten- 
tion. While their elder sisters, the trees, keep 
their unobtrusive estate, and minister untir- 
ingly to our comfort with little praise or rec- 
ognition. Yet, how necessary they are! I do 
not mean how useful, I mean spiritually need- 
ful. 

Apart from their humble office as givers of 
shade and preservers of streams, they minister 
more than we guess to our hourly pleasure. 
Yet we are so thoughtless of them that we 
take their benefits without a word of gratitude 
for the most part. If you have seen a wooded 
hillside in winter you will remember how 

*93 



artie ItinsiiM) of Nature 

lonely and bleak it looked. Only the bare 
skeletons of the trees spread over the moun- 
tain, and all the great primitive strength and 
ruggedness and sorry age of the earth ex- 
posed to sight, — the ribs of the world. These 
are the same hills, perhaps, that you knew in 
summer, so green and so luxuriant, bare now 
and stern, showing all their scars, bitter evi- 
dences of their strenuous, enduring history. 
The calm, unimpassioned whiteness of the 
snow has folded them in its chilly oblivion. It 
is impossible to believe that spring can repeat 
her ancient miracle; surely, here is the veriest 
desolation, the mere gecj^^y of life, inorganic 
dust, the inert masj^of the firmament given 
over to the stealtSy depredation of elemental 
time; no hope. nor assurance anywhere. 

And yet, in contradiction of all the proba- 
bilities of sense, that desolation will grow 
vivid and lovely as the sun comes north. All 
those gaunt spectres that now seem so ghostly 
will put on their gala attire, the April orange 
and May-time green. That soft, purplish mist 

194 



of the far spring woods means in reality the 
reds and yellows of the maple blossoms, and 
the paler yellows and silver of the willow cat- 
kins. It is the first flush of reviving life that 
comes before the green of leaf. And carefully 
as you may watch, the green banners will seem 
to be flung abroad suddenly at last. If you 
single out one tree for your care, and observe 
it every day, you may think to trace the 
gradual assumption of its full robes for June. 
You will be disappointed. There will come a 
day of rain or a night of warmth, and when 
you next see your friend you will stand aston- 
ished at the change. You have been surprised 
again by nature. The ancient sorceress had 
no mind to be spied upon; and must guard 
well the secret of her power over your won- 
dering admiration. There you are, outwitted, 
after all; for the tree unfolded every leaf 
while you slept. So the grass springs, and 
the dandelions are born, — by magic, in a 
twinkling, myriads at once, — so that yester- 
day they were unheard of, and to-day they 

195 



<ZTije Wtimfyip of Nature 

possess the earth in their gay panoply and 
simple golden pomp. 

The trees are the great mitigators and tem- 
perers of the elements to man. They shelter 
us from the fury of the rain and snow, yet 
conserve it for our gradual use. They shade 
us from the glare of the open sun, yet in time 
furnish us with heat and light. A treeless 
country is not the best of countries. Its useful- 
ness is limited and specialized. A normal 
earth for man has both forest and prairie. But 
these are only the gross material blessings of 
the trees. There remains all their beauty. 

How few of us ever heed those goodly, pa- 
tient friends of man. We go forth and rifle 
the wilderness of its laurel or its arbutus, but 
not one in ten among us knows a beech from 
a maple, nor a pine from a spruce. It is a 
part of our dense indifference to everything 
save personal luxury. But a nation which 
does not know one tree from another is in 
peril of vanishing from the earth. Puny 



196 



£ vttu 

dwellers in cities, let us get down to earth 
more often than we do. 

I suppose one's love of trees changes like 
one's love of everything else. At one time of 
life we adore the oak; at another the elm 
commands our allegiance. It is a matter of 
circumstance and environment, since each tree 
differs from its fellow and each is lovely after 
its kind. To name the elm is to have a vision 
of great meadows, and summer barns, and 
fields of hay, and sweeps of blue river. The 
elm is a lover of such scenes, and if we have 
lived through them in youth, its swaying, 
feathery top will always recall the memories 
of that perished time, — remembrances of a 
native country, of intervale lands, with some 
great river winding slowly down between the 
hills, blue under the summer sky. There are 
its broad, deep-soiled islands, shoulder high 
with hay, where the few gray, wide-chinked 
barns stand awaiting their harvest. Along the 
edges of the islands are a few chokecherries 
and water maples, but no great trees save the 

197 



2TJ)* fttnsJjtp of Wattttre 

stately elms here and there, solitary under the 
blue. 

Or, again, it may be the marvellous maple 
of the north that would enlist all your friend- 
ship. Its brave scarlet and golden coat makes 
the autumn world a mediaeval crusade for bril- 
liancy and courage. It is surely impossible 
to be craven or hopeless in the face of such 
gorgeous beauty! October in the moun- 
tains, when the maples are in all their splen- 
dour, is no time for the trifling or the mean. 
To see those beautiful trees arrayed for the 
closing days of the year is to partake of the 
nobleness of nature. While we know it not, 
something of that wondrous Oriental richness 
of colour enters into our subtler make-up, and 
we arise on the morrow with unguessed ac- 
quisitions of soul. 

Again, there are the pines. And how differ- 
ent the pine regions of the south from those 
of the north. There is one thing, however, 
that marks a pine-tree, one quality in which 
none of the other children of the forest can 

198 



i&xttu 

rival it — its delicacy of line against the sky. 
No other tree throws on the pale blue curtain 
so graceful a tracery of tiny pencillings. Look 
at the branch of a pine-tree in the twilight 
seen clear against the open heaven. And so, 
indeed, you may run through your list of 
acquaintance among the trees. Note the shaft 
of the spruce, the trembling leaf of the aspen 
set on differently from all other leaves, and 
the sound of the palms like the patter of rain, 
and the colour of the beech boles. A master 
could write a volume on any one of these 
traits. On some mountainside, where the 
wildest thrushes prefer to dwell, and where 
beech-trees come to their perfection, note, the 
next time you pass, the beautiful gray and blue 
and purple of those smooth-barked boles. 
The trunk of a full-grown beech is subject 
enough for any painter. Like Monet's hay- 
stack, it might be painted in a hundred lights, 
and still stand there unexhausted in sugges- 
tion and beauty. 

When Arnold was in America our tulip- 
199 



2Ttje istnsijfji of Watttte 

trees took his fancy, and he wished to be re- 
membered when they come in flower. So 
every season has its distinctive tree; the dark- 
painted fir full of snow in midwinter, and 
the greenish-white flowered chestnuts show- 
ing pale in the forests of July. But at all 
times of the round year the trees of the wild 
forest are there, only waiting to be known and 
loved. 



200 



CJje Ettuai of Mature 



©)* Kitual of Matntt 



ALWAYS and everywhere the law of strict 
congruity obtaining in nature, is not less won- 
derful than the law of universal variation. 
Before my window a cherry-tree is waving in 
the sunlight; it bears some thousands of 
leaves, no two of which are precisely alike; 
yet it is itself only one of hundreds of other 
cherry-trees within eyeshot, while they again 
are a mere handful of all the cherry-trees in 
the State. And still of these myriads of leaves, 
you could not place one down upon another 
and find them to match precisely. There 
would be some slight difference of outline, a 
dent here, a point there, — the individual 
idiosyncrasy of the leaf. Yet all these cherry 

203 



JECJje Zunstji]) of Watttre 

leaves conform to the type and character 
which they have gradually developed for 
themselves. They are great sticklers for tradi- 
tion, these leaves; they allow complete per- 
sonal liberty, within certain limits. If you 
are a cherry leaf you may be as odd and queer 
as you please, so long as you remain a cherry 
leaf. It is ordered, however, that you must so 
far conform to the character of your race as 
to be distinguishable from the elms and the 
alders. Latitude is allowed, but degrees of 
latitude are found necessary. 

It would seem, then, that Nature is strictly 
a formalist in dealing with her tribes, that 
she permits them just so much liberty of ac- 
tion and freedom of thought as shall conserve 
the interest of the individual, and not enough 
to imperil the integrity of the sect. " Dwell 
in harmony," she seems to say, " all you mul- 
titudes of differing schools. Be yourselves, 
each as distinct as you please; every indi- 
vidual by himself distinguished from his 
brother, yet not alien. Let there be no in- 

204 



Etje mitttal of Mature 

fringing on the borders of your fellow tribes." 
So that with all her tolerance the Great 
Mother still limits personal whim, still for- 
bids fancy to overstep the bounds of reason- 
able divergence, still humours ambition but 
discourages arrogance, and still mitigates the 
pride of life in her children by imposing a 
frontier beyond which they shall not pass. 
Surely from her immemorial custom the open- 
minded observer will learn the double precept 
of perfect liberty in perfect obedience, and her 
service, too, is perfect freedom. The lesser 
gospel of the leaves, like the greater gospel 
of the sages, is the utmost range of will within 
the utmost bounds of law. Each after his kind 
shall thrive and prosper as it was in the 
beginning, and none shall transcend his appor- 
tioned sphere. So that in the stupendous 
hierarchy whose visible temple is the dome 
of blue, whose worshippers are the congre- 
gations of the all-growing creatures, there is 
promulgated the dogma of limitations. 
In proof of this, behold the rituals of the 
205 



forest! The aspiration of the maples taking 
shape, after the traditions of their ancestors 
for a thousand generations, in one form, 
the aspiration of the pines in another. To 
the tanager one peculiar intonation, and to the 
song-sparrow another. The litany of the 
white-throat and the psalm of the thrush. 
Whatever may be in the dark mind of the 
owl, he is given but few words to express it; 
the plaintive iterations of the whippoorwill 
must serve him in lieu of a more voluminous 
chant; and who shall say that brilliant utter- 
ance of the bobolink is sufficient for him? Yet 
it is all he has. And none shall transcend his 
allotted ritual, nor praise the Power in forms 
unprescribed. 

To be a bystander, therefore, an individual- 
ist, a radical, a nonconformist, is the one atro- 
cious crime in nature. All this seeming 
rigour of differentiation is only the first 
glimpse of a world which is one, whole, single, 
indivisible. At first sight it appears that our 
brother the cherry is alien in race to our 

206 



&De mtual of Mature 

cousin the peach ; so they may be by our faulty 
terms of distinction. But the scientists affirm 
that all classification is but more or less con- 
venient; that it is never absolute, nor accu- 
rate beyond a certain point; that character- 
istics melt and merge into one another, so that 
often it is impossible to tell this species from 
that; and various forms of life are blended 
like the colours of the spectrum. 

How came the woodthrush to outstrip the 
robin in song? And why is the fox still the 
wolf's better in intelligence? By attempting, 
by aspiration, by daring the unknown and 
achieving the untried. 

While, therefore, there are two observances 
in the ritual of Nature, the duty of obedience, 
and the duty of adventure, the latter is the 
greater of the two. The seed which is placed 
in dry bin is secure, and will last a hundred 
years intact; its fellow which is thrust into 
the moist earth takes a thousand chances of 
death for the one chance of glorious energy, 
growth, and perfection. Following the law 

207 



8Tt)* liimt)ip of Wattttr* 

of obedience it would live to see its offspring 
spread through the forest, cover the earth with 
shade, and fulfil the offices of the ritual ap- 
pointed for its kind. 

Yet every leaf, every bud that sprang from 
that courageous fecundity would only con- 
form to the pattern of his tribe so much and 
no more. There would remain to each his 
own character, his individuality, his own 
mode of worship, if one may say so. And it is 
just this increment of variation, for ever at 
play in the forces of the universe, that makes 
for progress, interest, truth. So that while we 
admire the sober catholicity of Nature, and 
keep in mind her singleness of brotherhood, 
we are to reverence her boundless liberality 
still more. 

I have no doubt our friend the cherry-tree 
is well content to be himself, " imperial, plain, 
and true;" also, I have no doubt that deep 
in his sappy heart there lurks the patient 
power which in time will make him enlarge 



ao8 



m* autttal of Mature 

his ritual, ennobling his worship, and spread- 
ing wider the gospel according to St. Cherry. 
For the abiding unrebellious spirit is good, 
but the divine unrest is good, too. 



209 



Concerning $ntie 



©omemittjj ©rite 



Pride has long been enrolled among the 
vices which we should abhor, — has been exe- 
crated by the church, and condemned by popu- 
lar consent as a spiritual attribute to be eradi- 
cated; and there is a sort of pride, or a de- 
gree of pride, which is altogether personal, 
petty, and unworthy, and which is only saved 
from being most offensive by being ridicu- 
lous. 

Pride, however, is essentially and funda- 
mentally one of the virtues, not one of the 
vices. Pride, if you analyze it, seems to be 
one of the component parts of love. For in 
love there is an unreasoned, incomprehensible 
attraction for another, which draws us often 
in spite of our better judgment, in spite of 

213 



art)* m%x&$\» of isratttre 

our finer instinct, and which we call the physi- 
cal element of love. It is not at all an ignoble 
quality, as many have mistakenly fancied. It 
is not a quality of which to be ashamed, or of 
which we should try to rid ourselves. It is 
probably governed by reasons more complex 
and subtle than we comprehend. And power- 
ful as it is, its mandates must be given their 
due weight. 

Physical attraction, or the primitive blind 
forceful bidding of cosmic nature, is only a 
third of love, however. There are two other 
constituents, equally important. The second 
constituent is spiritual, and partakes of the 
nature of worship or reverence, and leads to 
those beautiful enduring acts of devotion 
which we so commonly associate with the idea 
of love. But the third constituent of the pas- 
sion of love is pride. Love manifests itself 
in our bodies as instinctive craving, in our 
souls as devotion, and in our minds as pride. 

No love is complete without pride. It is 
not enough that I feel an irresistible liking for 

214 



©otueruiug tyvtttt 

my friend, and that I rejoice in an unswerving 
devotion toward him. I must be able to retain 
my pride in him as well. My judgment must 
be able to consider him in all his dealings and 
find him good. When I can no longer take 
pride in my friend, there is only the ghost 
of love left. When he does that of which I 
must disapprove, perfect friendship is imper- 
illed. I may continue to be devoted as be- 
fore, but the fair relation of our lives is 
impaired. I can no longer give him that 
unqualified enthusiasm, that delightful zest 
of the spirit, which betokens a great friend- 
ship. When I think of him my thought is 
infected with sadness. I no longer love him 
with my whole being; my pride in him, for 
the time being at least, has suffered injury. 

Just so in the relations of men and women, 
pride is the savour of love. Adam is enam- 
oured of Eve, first by propinquity, second by 
admiration, lastly by unselfish devotion. But 
the admiration, the pride in Eve's traits and 
accomplishments, is at first probably much 

215 



artje Ztingijip of Nature 

more than one-third of Adam's feeling toward 
her. And all through their courtship Eve 
has enough intuitive wisdom to foster this 
pride of Adam's toward herself; and Adam, 
taught by the same wise nature, knows without 
thinking that he must be his best before Eve. 
Then follows the ceremony, the sad enthrall- 
ment, which appears to be necessary still, and 
which is so often fatal to love. But why fatal? 
Why should marriage be so indubitably a 
means of the destruction of love? Why is it 
so rarely the ideal relation which we persist 
in pretending it is? 

Is it not because of disillusion? And does 
not the disillusion follow from carelessness? 

No sooner has Eve become Mrs. Adam 
than she takes Adam's love for granted. She 
begins to rely on her marriage certificate. 
That terrific document is endowed with so 
much real and manifest power over the will 
and the action of her companion that she in- 
evitably comes to consider Adam's heart as 
firmly bound as Adam's person. Little by 

216 



etotuermufl $rttie 

little she neglects those instinctive admoni- 
tions of her nature, which would bid her al- 
ways appeal to Adam's pride in her. She no 
longer feels it necessary to please him, to 
appear to best advantage in his sight. He is 
only her husband; it doesn't matter. She 
" braces up " " for company," but when " only 
Adam " is at home she may go as slipshod 
and negligent as she pleases. 

And Adam? Well, Adam doesn't shave 
every day now. There will be no one at break- 
fast but Eve. When the dinner is not good he 
can grumble a little, if there is no one present 
but his wife. He, too, has forgotten that pride 
is one-third of love. 

So Adam and Eve reveal to each other their 
petty faults, their insignificant flaws of char- 
acter, which so little care would hide; the 
admiration of each for the other is gradually 
destroyed; pride is allowed to die, and with 
the death of pride love receives a mortal 
wound. Oh, Eve, how can you be so foolish? 
How can you imagine that any silly writing 

217 



2C^e mnuftifi of Ttfatttre 

upon paper will bind an immortal being to 
you, when you allow that being's pride in you 
to be outraged every day? And oh, Adam, 
what a fool you must be to allow Eve to suf- 
fer one moment's disillusion in regard to you! 
If you cannot retain the love of Eve, it is your 
fault, very often, and not hers; and you de- 
serve to lose her. And if she cannot command 
your continual regard, ten to one it is her 
own fault and not yours. 

Of all the causes which make for the over- 
throw of love and the destruction of happi- 
ness between men and women, (so sad and, 
alas, so common!), surely none is surer nor 
more frequent than this loss of pride. Yet 
some men are so fatuous that they will not 
allow others to retain any illusion in regard 
to themselves. They insist on revealing all 
their weaknesses, with a fond notion that an 
engaging frankness is better than deception. 
Not so. No man has the power of reaching 
his own ideal, unless he inculcates that ideal 
of himself in the minds of others. 

218 



Concerning prfire 

But noble, generous, wise, and modest pride 
is not a virtue much in vogue in our day. Are 
we not apt to think that democracy consists in 
making ourselves no better than our neigh- 
bours? Whereas true democracy implies only 
the free and fair chance to each man to be his 
best. The capacity for being one's best re- 
mains unchanged ; and the duty of being one's 
best stands as obligatory as ever. I believe in 
freedom for all (the wise man might say), 
because I believe in it for myself, in order that 
I may realize my better and greater self. And 
to do this one must have pride, — pride that 
keeps one erect and unflinching to the last, — 
pride that insists on scrupulous manners, 
admirable breeding, deep culture, and impec- 
cable self-control, — pride that preserves for 
ever the beautiful and radiant illusions of the 
soul. For without pride in ourselves, in our 
work, and in each other, life becomes sordid 
and vulgar and slovenly; the work of our 
hands unlovely; and we ourselves hopeless 
and debased. 

219 



(Bf Breeding 



©f afredrttijl 



If pride is the essence of respect for one's 
self, breeding is, we may almost say, the habit 
of respect for others. It is pride made gener- 
ous, pride thoroughly purged of selfishness. 
The constant habit of regard for our neigh- 
bour and our friend is surely one of the prime 
requisites of a comfortable life among mortals. 
The exaltation of the ego is an essence of prog- 
ress and the aim of perfection; but the recog- 
nition of many an alter ego about us is equally 
imperative. The failure to perceive their ex- 
istence, appreciate their differences, and make 
allowance for their varying needs, must result 
in disaster to ourselves. 

First of all things I know my own likes and 
dislikes, desires, wants, failings, aspirations, 

223 



£t)* Ittusfjtp of Nature 

pleasures, joys, sorrows, and fears; and I 
instinctively proceed to live my life about these 
fundamental facts. If I have a measure of 
wisdom I try so to balance these natural forces 
as to produce in my character some faint 
similitude of that ideal of personality which 
his imagination reveals to every man, — striv- 
ing in the course of years to approach ever 
nearer and nearer the true self which I feel 
I am capable of becoming. Always to keep 
this beautiful image in sight, ahvays to be hop- 
ing for its realization in ourselves, never to 
despair of one day accomplishing even in this 
life our longed-for wish, — this is the gist of 
culture. And it is pride, — honest, wise, un- 
selfish, tolerant pride, — that must be our 
mainstay in that splendid impossible struggle, 
that strife for perfection which we must for 
ever wage, and which brings its rich results 
hour by hour, though we seem to fail at last. 
There is no more imperative or more be- 
coming duty than self-culture, — bodily, men- 
tal, spiritual. For surely, in so delightful and 

224 



wonderful a world, we cannot be too eager 
or too persistent to make ourselves in every 
degree worthy of life. Our instinct every day 
cries out for larger endeavour and more glori- 
ous achievement than we have yet known. 
Each morning we look upon creation and are 
dumbly aware of the call of opportunity, and 
the spirit within us resolves to do. Not a 
mortal in the universe but has said to himself, 
" I will." And in the evening we are aware 
of determinations unfulfilled. Perhaps these 
failures in accomplishment are all there is 
of imperfection upon earth. Perhaps all we 
need to do, in order to touch immortal happi- 
ness and partake of immortal life, is to attain 
our own ideal once, and once for all. A possi- 
bility almost beyond the likelihood of human 
grasp! And yet it is not in man's nature to 
despair, save at times; for the most part we 
are buoyant with the elation of expectancy, 
and taste the relish of confidence. In all the 
drift of existence, the trend which energy fol- 



225 



SJje mnnffip of Nature 

lows from nothingness to beauty, pride is the 
indwelling active spirit, the regulating power. 
But pride is not enough, culture of self is 
not enough, joy in self-growth is not enough. 
Indeed, in itself alone, and of itself alone, self- 
culture cannot subsist. We cannot for an 
instant maintain our being without depend- 
ence on circumstance and surrounding. From 
within we know the impulse of self-assertion 
— in the largest, best sense; but from percep- 
tion we see that the world is an agglomeration 
of other beings like ourselves, no one of which 
is more important than another. And the con- 
clusion comes in on us that we too are each 
of us no more than an atom, and that as our 
relations with others are inevitable, so they 
should be considerate. While natural ego- 
tism makes us insistent, our first intelligent 
glance at the world should make us plastic. 
Yet so stubborn is spirit, so tenacious of life 
at all hazards, that it does not easily concede to 
others those rights it demands for itself. The 
habit of doing this is the aim of breeding. 

226 



The disinterested mind perceives that for the 
perfection of selfhood unselfishness is neces- 
sary. That which I forego in consideration 
for others shall return to me again in conscious 
rectitude and self-respect. 

As pride is a part of love, the instinctive 
foresight of the loving spirit, and exhibits 
itself in nobleness and worthiness, so breeding 
is the habit of these moral qualities. For in 
the moral world breeding is not merely tradi- 
tion and inherited custom; it is the training 
and individual culture needful for perfection 
of character. Breeding makes habitual those 
traits and actions which otherwise we would 
only display at rare moments of inspiration. 

Kindness, gentleness, civility, manners, con- 
tentment, sweetness, constancy, devotion, — 
these are some of the results and evidences of 
breeding. In breeding the character acquires 
temper, as a piece of steel does in the process 
of manufacture, and is no longer malleable as 
iron, but firmer, more trustworthy and suscep- 
tible of polish, and far more elastic and sensi- 

227 



tive. Breeding prescribes this and that, limits 
the whim of the individual, curtails choice 
and enforces submission, and yet not excess- 
ively, but only for the sake of the greater ulti- 
mate perfection of all. In our battle for indi- 
vidualism we must remember that Nature has 
probably endowed all of her children with a 
superabundance of egotism. Just as she ere™ 
ates myriads of seeds on thousands of trees, 
with the chance of only a very few coming to 
maturity; so she endows us with enormous 
egotism, that her ends may be served, and that 
we may be in no danger of extinction through 
indifference. It by no means follows, how- 
ever, than we can make use of all our egotism, 
or even a large part of it. We ought cheer- 
fully to recognize the fact that very often the 
individual will is destined to disappointment. 
It is right for you and me to insist on our own 
way, as pride and impulse bid; yet, if we 
could have our utmost will, we should be flour- 
ishing to an unheard-of extent, to the cost and 
detriment of all nature. 

228 



©f ISmtriufl 

Breeding teaches the necessary resignation 
of small and selfish aims, and inculcates an 
unfailing endeavour on behalf of society. 
Good breeding is scrupulous in requiring the 
sacrifice of our own comfort for that of others. 
It makes us for ever tireless in obeying our 
own good impulses. The vulgar may be kind 
and generous and loving. But only the well- 
bred are tireless in observing the smallest and 
nicest amenities. For wisdom knows how 
lazy we are and how readily we fall into habits 
of slovenly conduct even toward those whom 
we love most dearly; it therefore creates the 
code, and supplies the culture, to aid us in our 
difficult task. Life without breeding is food 
without savour; it is art without form. Only 
the shallow mind will imagine that perfection 
may be gained without the generous helps 
which breeding alone can supply. 



229 



<&i g>etetutp 



©f Semuttj 



SERENITY is a sort of spiritual capital; it 
is that residuum of spiritual production which 
remains over to assist future production. If 
we have no serenity left after a spiritual ex- 
perience of any kind, we may be sure that 
our life, to that extent at least, has been in vain. 

Do you read, do you smoke, do you dine, do 
you take a walk, do you visit a picture show? 
What is the residue of impression left on your 
mind when the hour is past? If it is one of 
pleasurable content, an increment of quiet 
happiness, the experience has been worth 
while. If it is one of uneasy excitement, you 
have gained nothing. You have toiled unprof- 
itably. For the spirit, like the body, must 
see the result of its labour; and that result 

*33 



2Tt)t lilusijip of Nature 

is a fund of abiding serenity. How else are 
we to face the future and the unknown without 
perturbation? If our whole existence is to 
be made up of excitement, how shall fortitude 
survive? Those people who think to lose 
their unhappiness in a chain of endless ac- 
tivity, accomplish only a temporary allevia- 
tion for themselves. The more engrossed 
they become in mere activity for its own sake, 
the more futile will it seem to them at last. 
Rather than increasing their store of serenity 
against the foul weather of poverty or age or 
decrepitude, they have been spending it lav- 
ishly in the thousand channels of strenuous 
activity. 

As Emerson has it somewhere, our real life 
is in the silent moments. It may be in the 
pauses of conversation, during the midday 
rest by a running water, or after the guests are 
gone and the coals settle in the grate ; but the 
inner life does not receive its pleasure or its 
nourishment in the doing of things; its normal 
joy is in accessions of serenity; it subscribes 

234 



willingly to Stevenson's saying that gentle- 
ness and cheerfulness are above all morality, 
— are the greatest virtues. 

Yet this is no plea for idle shiftlessness. The 
inert and careless, who are incorrigible by- 
standers at the great pageant of life, seldom 
taste true serenity. They are for ever infected 
with a feverish dissatisfaction. The slow 
malaria of inefficiency is in their bones. Too 
supine for effort or accomplishment, they miss 
the zest of relaxation, and dribble away their 
days in a woebegone dyspeptic indolence. 
They have no proper conception of the joys of 
leisure; they are as unfortunate as those who 
must be for ever on the go. It has never oc- 
curred to them to take hold of this life sturdily 
in their two hands, to work with a will, to 
play with a will, to loaf with a will. 

But the wise man yields himself to the mo- 
ment; he is glad of the relish in toil, glad of 
the serenity in rest. He does not belong to 
the leisure class nor yet to the working class; 
for in his philosophy there should be no lei- 

2 35 



sure class; leisure should be common as air 
or water, for men to take as they need; and 
work should be as delightful as leisure. There 
are thousands of men who do not know how to 
rest, who have almost no faculty of enjoyment; 
but there never yet was a man who did not 
love work, — his own proper work in the 
natural exercise of his powers. 

In any case, to be serene does not mean to be 
idle. For serenity of spirit may be kept in 
the midst of activity; and the most effective 
workers are those who are never hurried, 
never flustered, but retain in the thickest tur- 
moil of daily life an imperturbable demeanour 
and steadiness of mind. Your nervous indi- 
vidual, whose fund of serenity is low, rushes 
about in a frenzy of fussy excitement, achiev- 
ing nothing but his own destruction. In that 
most detestable of all vulgarisms, he is a 
" hustler." God help him! He is distraught 
with a mental rabies; he has been bitten by 
the greed or envy of commercialism, or some 
other of the black dogs of modern civilization, 

236 



©f Smutt» 

and his finish will not be a wholesome thing 
to see. 

Our day has almost made it seem true that 
to live without madness, one must live without 
haste. The man engaged in active business, as 
it is called, is very much in the position of a 
ranchman in a stampede. If he loses his head 
through a moment's agitation, his doom is 
written. He must preserve in the irrational 
whirl around him at least a remnant of 
serenity. To be wholly engrossed in his sur- 
roundings, to lose his self-command, is de- 
struction. 

Serenity is the atmosphere of poise, the still 
air in which the nicely adjusted balance of 
all our powers may be maintained. To pre- 
serve it we should be willing to sacrifice every- 
thing but life itself. Yet it is not to be had in 
exchange for any possession or characteristic. 
It is a habit, a moral attribute, a mode of 
thinking; it is one of the tides of the mind. 
And like so many of the best things in our 
mortal existence, it is greatly a matter of 

237 



8Tfte mnutiip of Nature 

temperament. All men are born in bondage 
and unequal; and some are blessed by the 
fairy godmother with happier dispositions 
than others. Still there is no despair for any 
of us; if we have not the benign temper, the 
temperament which makes for happiness, it 
is our first business to acquire it. Why go 
through this world perpetually disgruntled, 
when men will concede so much to a smile? 
He who is serene commands a digestive that 
defies dyspepsia and will carry the buoyancy 
of youth into the ruts of old age. 

When you pass from the realm of actual life 
into the realm of art, serenity becomes the no- 
blest of all attributes. In the world of 
beauty, where every line, every shade, every 
tone, is adjusted in considerations of perma- 
nence, how shall we tolerate anything that is 
not serenely alive? An art in which there is 
no serenity can no more mirror nature and 
human life for us, than a ruffled stream can 
reflect the trees above it. 



2 3 8 



$la£ 



Wat) 



IT is a word long discredited, but never 
forgotten and sure to return to honour among 
men. For play is not an invention of luxu- 
rious idleness, but simply one of the phe- 
nomena of earth, a necessity of our mortal 
state. Think of play as meaning freedom 
from stress, freedom from restraint. The play 
of a bolt or a beam in construction is often 
fatal ; and yet without play how often a mech- 
anism would come to wreck! The play of the 
forest trees in wind is their safeguard; and 
when an ice-storm falls on them and locks 
them down to the rigidity of iron, then be- 
ware of the living winds of heaven that come 
boisterously down upon them! Their fettered 
limbs snap, their poor bodies are riven and 

241 



&&* mmfyip of TSvtnvt 

split, their noble heads go down to the shades 
and they are counted in the refuse of the 
world. With no give, with no relaxation, with 
no play, their usefulness is done; they must 
perish. 

The rocks may stand fast to our sight, but 
we can measure the enormous play of a glacier, 
and the ordered play of the spheres is our con- 
stant admiration. Indeed, you will find in 
nature that everything has play, according to 
the need of its being, and the higher and more 
complex the life, the greater the amount of 
play necessary to safety. As you pass from the 
solid and fixed frame of the globe outward 
toward light and warmth, think how play is 
given to the creatures born in the sun. First 
the mosses and lichens and stunted herbage 
of cold regions, then the more luxurious trees 
and grasses and waving ferns; the fish in the 
water; the moving rivers, the stupendous tides ; 
the beasts that traverse the ground; the hosts 
of birds migrating and dancing through 
space; and, frailest of all the myriads of 

242 



W*2 

ephemera, those beautiful scraps of winged 
colour that go sailing away light as thistle- 
seed on the perilous adventures of the air; 
life, the varied and untold play of motion and 
colour over the surface of the dull ground, the 
fact of being, clothed with the phantom of 
beauty, — this is the flux of existence. This 
helped to give rise to the " Everything is flow- 
ing " of the Greeks. 

So from core to verge, from inertia to intel- 
ligence, from crude to complex, there is al- 
ways a greater and greater play allowed, until 
we come to the region (true or fabulous) of 
pure spirit, where being may have its essence 
unhampered by place or time. We do not 
know much of the dominion of unincarnate 
soul, but we are agreed in according it the ut- 
most latitude of come and go and in denying 
it all fixity save that of purpose. And we 
speak of the play of the mind, the free play 
of the intellect. 

Still with the idea of play as meaning 
scope, spread, activity, we know that educa- 

243 



&f)e ftiustjtp of Watutt 

tion comes through achievement alone; that 
the building of character from habit is 
wrought out only through the play of the 
individual will. Stultify the will, prohibit its 
play, and you have at once destroyed its power 
of growth. The principle of life is movement, 
and stagnation is death. So that if a thing has 
no play, you may be sure it has no life. 

So, too, if you will follow the trail of the 
word into meaning of playfulness and amuse- 
ment ; perhaps you will not be far wrong if you 
declare that play means health. Play is the 
fine flavour of the spirit, the expression of joy. 
Just as we gain freedom for the play of our 
powers, we gain enjoyment in the playfulness 
of spirit. The animals play, and man in a 
normal, healthy state takes the universe for his 
playroom. To be a doleful, puritanic, unso- 
cial Pharisee is to be a degenerate. A sour 
visage means debauchery of the soul, as truly 
as other appearances indicate bodily intem- 
perance. To keep the Ten Commandments is 
not the whole business of man, not his whole 

244 



duty; it is only a beginning, a crude makeshift 
of conduct; and the law of love by which they 
were superseded brings us nearer to perfec- 
tion. 

Think of the added zest we might have if 
only we set ourselves to play the role assigned 
us for half its proper worth. To act with sin- 
cerity, with ease, with unfailing graciousness; 
to add ever so little to the store of gaiety; to 
relieve the monotony of work; to soothe un- 
conquerable sorrow; to go lightly and pleas- 
antly across the boards, and leave a sense of 
elation and good nature as we pass; this is the 
method to make us not regret our exit, and, 
what is more to the purpose, this is the sort 
of play to make our fellows the happier for 
our acting, however small the part. 



24S 



%\)t Scarlet of tije Hear 



Qfyz Starlet of tije %tat 



i. 

The beautiful changes of the seasons come 
upon us so furtively, and yet so surely, that 
their appearance seems sudden at last. Day 
by day, through the dry glow of August, we 
say, " The summer is waning; soon we shall 
see the hills all crimson; even now there is a 
touch of Indian summer in the atmosphere, 
though the air is so warm." And then, after 
all, it takes us by surprise some morning to 
look up and see a solitary tree all scarlet on 
the mountain. Yet his message was impera- 
tive and could suffer no delay; prompt as the 
first April robin, there he must appear, to do 

249 



the bidding of those great primary powers 
we are pleased to call Nature. 

Yes, it is quite true, as some one remarked 
the other day editorially (I have forgotten 
where), we are for ever being exhorted to 
worship Nature, to turn from our overstrenu- 
ous diligence, our overcentralized life, and 
come back to the primitive conditions of the 
great outdoor world. True, that is our native 
air; we shall reap good from it in abundance, 
if we are wise; and I, for one, should be glad 
to see the whole town turned out into the 
woods for three months every year. Ah, how 
gladly would they be turned out if they could! 
But that is our fault, my friend, yours and 
mine and the next man's; and it is a poor les- 
son we have learned from this great Nature, 
if we have not taken the hint of generosity, if 
we have not learned tolerance, if we have not 
been infected with a lofty and unflinching 
sweetness, which is full of care for others' joy 
as well as our own. 

What do they say, these scarlet priests of 
250 



JSTJje Scarlet of tfje ¥*ar 

the hills? Now the maples have put on their 
valiant colours, and the ash and beech are 
robed in the light of yellow and bronze; the 
birches, too, and the wayfaring tree are all 
in bright array. What is the meaning of so 
great a pomp and splendour? Why the 
gayest, bravest tints in the season of decay, 
at the time of universal perishing? 

There is no answer. Even if science could 
tell just the use of colour in the scheme of life, 
we should have our metaphorical or symbol- 
istic sense still unsatisfied. Meanwhile the 
gladness of autumn is undoubted; the strong 
heartening note is sounded everywhere above 
the dismal ruin of summer beauty. Indeed, it 
is only a merging of the lesser beauty into the 
greater. And one fancies (fantastically, in- 
deed) that only in the New World is the year's 
death made so glorious, as if not until now 
could men ever imagine that death is anything 
but ruin. 

" No, indeed," say the scarlet priests of the 
mountains; "behold in the midst of unfaded 

251 



Efft lunsijtp of TSTatttre 

April green we don our brightest robes, and 
give you the New Message, — even we, the 
lowly folk of the forest, the inarticulate people 
of the wilderness. We would have you to 
know that the gladness of the spring is nothing 
to our gladness. In the childhood of your 
race, you worshipped youth and love; but 
now that you are grown you shall wor- 
ship love and maturity. And death itself 
shall not be sad to you any more ; but in natu- 
ral sorrow you shall still valiantly rejoice. For 
it is better to triumph than to hope ; it is 
better to dare than to desire. What do they 
know of the fulness of life, who have never 
endured the rending wind and the riving 
frost? Hear us, and we will show you a better 
way than the pageant of the buds or the riot 
of perishable June! Fortitude, gladness, pa- 
tience, a smiling front in face of disaster, these 
be your watchwords for ever!" 

This, you say, is only our own thought put 
in the mouth of the forest people. But who 
shall say how much of our natural resignation 

252 



art)* Scarlet of tfje ¥ear 

may not have come, by subtle and potent influ- 
ences, from these very children of the moun- 
tainside? And who can tell how great has 
been the effect of the splendour of autumn on 
our idea of perfection? The forces of sugges- 
tion and association are so mysterious and so 
strong, so delicate in their hidden working, 
that one's thoughts about the solemnities of 
death and the completion of life might well 
come from sources as frail as a turning leaf or 
a seeding thistle. 

Where, then, is the influence of the scarlet 
of the year found in our art? How does it 
make itself felt in those works of our hands 
which represent us as a race? Think of the 
artists you know, writers or painters or crea- 
tors of the beautiful in any form; in whose 
work among them all do you find the brave 
scarlet note? It is not felt everywhere, cer- 
tainly. You would not say that Arnold has 
it, beloved and lovely as he is. His is the 
gray-green of a French forest or a southern 
olive grove. You would not say it is in Ten- 

*S3 



JCfjt lumijiv of Watttre 

nyson ; his colour is purple, the rich ennobled 
tinge of dignity and meditation. And the pre- 
Raphaelites? Certainly they have colour to 
spare, but not in the sense I mean. It is not 
their province to raise a response to any cheer 
from the troubled heart of their days. But in 
Emerson and Browning, there you may see at 
once the interpreted gospel of the scarlet leaf. 
The English poet never saw a bit of the New 
World forest in its raw brilliancy of fall; but 
do you not feel sure it would have delighted 
him — at once so subtle and so barbaric? 

And to whom, but to him and Emerson, are 
we to turn for that assurance to the spirit 
which Nature is preaching in her own dumb 
way from a thousand mountainsides to-day? 
There is another, too, whom common consent 
of criticism holds in lower esteem, but for 
whom I cannot help having an equal love. I 
am not sure that one does not love him, so 
human, so humane, so modest and kindly, even 
more than any of the greater masters. And on 
every page he wrote you will find traces of this 

2 54 



&%t ScavlU of m ¥*ar 

scarlet glory, this unquelled triumphant festi- 
val of the spirit, putting failure and defeat 
aside for ever. Who is there who loves men 
and books and nature, and can witness the gay 
procession of scarlet on the hills, without a 
thought of unconquerable Robert Louis? 



II. 



In the first blush of our autumnal season, 
it is the splendour and scarlet of it that most 
appeal to us. The green-feasted eye, full of 
the luxurious leisure of the quiet foliage, picks 
out at once the first fleck of crimson, conspicu- 
ous as a stain, — a spilth of blood or wine on 
the vest of nature. This is the sign, the pres- 
age, the portent of rehabilitation; and we 
must leap at heart for the valiant tinge. It is 
the colour of war, of energy, of manliness, of 
fortitude, of endurance, linking us with our 
primitive instincts, calling up the dejected 



n -SS 



2Tfjr 2ttu stjf]) of Wattir* 

spirit to new endeavours, heartening the dis- 
couraged and reviving the worn. 

" Courage, O divine vagabond," it seems to 
say, " already the turn of the road is here, the 
banners of the Delectable City are in sight. 
Brace, thee, then, for one effort more. Am I 
not the symbol to thee of triumph? Do not 
lassitude and doubt and cynicism flee before 
me? Why, then, ever be faint-hearted again? 
To-day is thine, and the promise of the mor- 
row is in my hand." 

But when the first impression of the scarlet 
world has worn off, when the sense becomes 
accustomed to so much magnificent display, 
we perceive other beauties, new and strange, 
mingling with the red. The softer, subtle 
richness of the tapestry comes out; elusive and 
lovely shades, unperceived at first, reveal 
themselves to the studious and enraptured 
gaze. It is not the raw splendour of the bar- 
baric kingly show that is most powerful over 
us; there are shyer hidden influences of pale 
attractiveness as well, here a scrap of pure 

256 



2TI)t ScatUt Of U)* IttUt 

yellow, there a tint of sheer purple or blue or 
lavender. 

It seems to me that I have never known a 
year half so voluptuous in colours as this. Is 
it not so? Before September had left the hills, 
every one was aware of the unusual lavishness 
and wonderful beauty of pigment. Only in 
dreams or in fairy tales could such pomp be 
possible. The leaves unwithered kept all 
their fresh perfection of June, with the added 
marvel of crimson or russet. One gazed 
across the mountain valleys from peak to peak 
as across a scarlet world. And in the silent, 
brooding air it would not have been incredible 
to people that wonderland with all the shapes 
of fancy from Homer's time to ours. You 
said to yourself, " Surely, I shall never see the 
like of this again," and then bade a sorrowful 
farewell to those high stretches of red hill and 
sweeping air. 

And yet the shore in its more sober garb was 
just as wonderful, just as unusual. If the hills 
were arrayed like kings, the marshes and open 

257 



Stje liimi)i» of Kature 

fields of the seaboard were emperors of their 
own dominion, too. In the first days of October 
a drenching storm and chilly twilight landed 
me at one hospitable hearthstone on the south 
shore. The wind was out of the northeast, 
gusting and quarrelsome, and it caught a trav- 
eller unprepared. There could be no joy of 
nature in such weather; protection, friends, 
and fire were the only things. But the next 
morning uprose one of those matchless days 
which seem to come on purpose to belie our 
gloomy apprehension. The clear sky, the 
drying roads, the fresh, wholesome wind, the 
talking leaves, and the far-off sparkle of the 
sea. The most confirmed morning hater could 
not refrain from a stroll before breakfast. In 
that new world by a quiet, woody road, some 
hours later our mother Autumn showed me 
her latest study in raw colour. Side by side 
above the stone wall stood a crimson maple 
and a yellow poplar. As you looked up in 
passing the light struck through them from 
behind you, drenching their pure tints in lux- 



2Cije Starlet of tJ)* ¥eav 

urious living light, on a background of the 
unmitigated blue. 

" There," I said, " is the trinity of colour," 
— the blue which was nothing but blue, the 
yellow which was nothing but yellow, and the 
other crimson. You might study them at your 
ease. Look straight into the deep red of the 
maple before you, or into the yellow of the 
aspen to your right, or into the blue between 
them. Then aloft where the tops swayed 
across the sky, you got the contrast of the red 
with the yellow. Look steadily a moment at 
the warm red of the maple cut against that 
cerulean hanging, and try to feel its mean- 
ing; then shift your eyes to the yellow. 

It does not do to be fanciful on paper, how- 
ever one may dream between sunrise and sun- 
set. But I am sure you would agree to the 
greater nobility of the spiritual yellow, as con- 
trasted with the burly physical red. And be- 
hind them all the incorruptible blue, the 
primal thought. There lay the deep strong 
tone of the blood-red tree, so physical, so sure, 

259 



2TJje Ititwfyip of Watttre 

so unabashed and sufficient. And beside it 
the sheer ethereal tremulousness of the yellow, 
— the colour of spirit, the colour that makes 
us feel. But before ever we could move or 
love, there was the great blue thought which 
comprehended the beginning and overarches 
the whole. 

If you think of these elementary colours as 
symbols of certain qualities, you will see some- 
thing more than a mere wayward fancy in such 
a title as " The Red Fairy Book," or " The 
Blue Fairy Book." You will think of colour 
not merely as an attribute of this good world, 
but as an index of our own inward emotional 
life as well. It is as if, when all the earth lay 
finished from the hand of the great Artifex, 
perfect in construction, lovely in form, wait- 
ing only the final impulse, he had smiled above 
his work, and that benign look was communi- 
cated to the new-made handicraft in the guise 
of colour, — a superfluous manifestation of 
beauty, the very breath or spirit of the Creator. 

And ever since, to keep us in mind of the 
260 



Creator's heritage of joy, colour remains on 
the face of the world, a possession of the spirit. 
They who deal in its appreciation and expres- 
sion are peculiarly the guardians of a sacred 
trust, receiving from it intimations of finer 
significance than the average eye can gather, 
and expressing through it the most intimate 
and delicate thoughts and yearnings. 



261 



#ooti ^fortune 



©ooir fortune 



" Henceforth I ask not good fortune, I 
myself am good fortune," says Whitman. But 
under what conditions? He enunciates this 
happy wisdom in the poem where he has just 
declared, " Afoot and light-hearted, I take to 
the open road." Good fortune, he would seem 
to say, resides in freedom, in immunity. Yet 
there is more than that necessary. It is not 
enough to sell all we have; we must follow 
in the Way. Good fortune is not an endow- 
ment of circumstance merely; it is rather a 
tenet of the mind, a mood of the spirit, and 
a physical attribute. It comes to us like a 
strain of harmonious being, when our com- 
plex nature is in accord with the visible world, 
and attuned to its own secret note. 

265 



arne mn^ip of 3C atttre 

"Afoot and light-hearted," no ill-fortune 
can overpower us. In the pursuit of happy, 
primitive exercise, the simple needs of the 
body are satisfied; and its magnetic enthusi- 
asm is communicated to the spirit. Emanci- 
pated from roofs and windows, setting forth 
for the unknown, physical needs reduced to a 
minimum, we become adventurers and dis- 
coverers, touched with elemental daring 
(timorous, secluded creatures that we are!), 
elated by a breath of nature. It is so that 
good fortune comes to the traveller. 

And is it not true that whenever we taste 
the sweet of life we are in this nomadic frame 
of mind? A certain sense of detachment and 
irresponsibility seems necessary to happiness, 
— a freedom purchased most cheaply, after 
all, at the price of obligations discharged and 
duties done. Good fortune, true success, is 
the indwelling radiance and serenity that 
comes and goes so mysteriously in every hu- 
man tenement. Expect her not, and she ar- 
rives; seek to detain her with elaborate argu- 

266 



<Koo?r tfovtuut 

ment or excuse, and she is gone. Yet must 
the door ever be open for her coming, and the 
board spread for her entertainment. So fleet- 
ing and incalculable is the best, so outside our 
own control, that we say it comes by the grace 
of God. 

Let this be so, indeed. Still the avenues for 
the approach of happiness are to some extent 
surely within our own control. To be clean 
and temperate and busy, to try to keep our- 
selves strong and healthy, not to wear injuri- 
ous clothes, nor to follow pernicious customs, 
to simplify the mechanism of living and enrich 
the motive, and to avoid fanaticism, this is the 
part of wisdom. It is first of all important, in 
seeking good fortune, that we should be able 
to secure coordination and sympathy between 
body, mind, and heart. To do this, evidently, 
we must be adaptable, — must try to have the 
open mind, the spirit of charity, the available 
strength, and readiness of body. That folly 
is only too palpable which fancies that happi- 



267 



2Ci)e liimfyip of Mature 

ness could be found in any one of the three 
natures that make up man. Certainly not in 
purely physical or sensual conditions does it 
flourish. We vainly seek it in creature com- 
forts alone, in physical delights alone. Equally 
futile is our search for it in the kingdom of 
the mind. That is a noble fallacy, but a fal- 
lacy none the less, which pins its faith to 
knowledge. Time out of mind there have 
been those who hoped to find happiness in 
the affairs of the intellect, and still it has 
eluded them. His royal master said of Lan- 
f ranc, " The day is coming, I see it afar, 
when these thin men will set their feet upon 
our corselets." And there is always a tend- 
ency toward that extreme. 

Then, too, how many are the children of 
joy, — those who pursue happiness in the wide 
bright fields of passion, — not the crude pas- 
sions of the senses, but the delicate passions of 
the spirit! How many devotees, how many 
lovers ! How many who have worn away their 



268 



(ffiootr iFottune 

lives in an ecstasy of longing or prayer or ex- 
pectation. And yet the loftiest religious ela- 
tion, the lonely frozen nobility of soul which 
belongs to the enthusiast and the believer, — 
cannot be called good fortune, but only a part 
of good fortune. It avails me nothing to see 
visions, if I am dyspeptic and cannot under- 
stand the Pons assinorum. The pugilist, the 
zealot, the bookworm, — each of these is but 
a third of a man, and none is more worthy 
than the other. An ignorant and brutalized 
athlete is just as far from complete manhood 
as a puny scholar or a blind bigot. And dif- 
ferential calculus alone is just as far from 
affording sufficient education as football is. 

Our best ideals have long since ceased to 
uphold the supremacy of the body. But 
neither must we despise it, as the Puritans 
did. Rather should we keep in view the due 
culture and gradual perfection of body and 
mind and spirit, discountenancing any favour 
to one above another. For Whitman's ideal 
is the best. " I myself am good fortune." 

269 



£t)t Iximtyp of Watttte 

And we should always aim to keep ourselves 
so healthy that every day, as we step out of 
doors, we can say after him, " Afoot and light- 
hearted I take to the open road." 



270 



Cf)e Brfmurfjerp of JHootj 



Uehaurijtttj of JWootr 



THERE are so many ways of making wreck 
of this perilous gift of life! A little too strenu- 
ous or a little too weak, a little too hot or a 
little too cold, a little too fast or a little too 
slow, a little too severe or a little too lax, and 
we are undone. So nice an adjustment seems 
to be needed to bring our lives to anything like 
success and a decent termination. So deli- 
cately are we balanced, as it were, on the very 
brink between sweeping current and relentless 
eddy. An overfrail physique, and all your 
splendid attainments of mind and lofty ambi- 
tions are brought prematurely to the ground. 
Or, again, a stout and hardy endowment of 

273 



2TJ)e liinsijMp of Mature 

body, and you may be undone by some uncon- 
querable habit. For habit, like disease, is 
often hereditary, and as often contracted. It 
is germinal in its origin, but sure and virulent 
in effect. Who does not see in his own round 
of life a score of his friends undone by some 
minute lack, some flaw in the adjustment of 
their powers? 

Yet the great world moves on. Even our 
own small life proceeds. For whether it be to 
failure or success, the first need of being is 
endurance, — to endure with gladness if we 
can, with fortitude in any event. This is the 
core of life; this is the kernel of nature. How 
then shall he contrive to keep always near that 
central truth, the progress of existence? How 
shall we manage to share the glad strength of 
the earth, in spite of pain and danger and sor- 
row and bitter disappointment? It is not quite 
enough to be stoical. Or, perhaps one ought 
to say, it is too much. For the stoics, one feels, 
were inclined to shut up the doors of the heart 
against the great currents of pity and love. 

274 



They hardly kept a welcome for joy; and 
when pleasure visited them, they were unpre- 
pared to make her at home. It seems there 
was too stubborn and negative a blend in their 
philosophy. To be stoical and nothing more 
is to be stolid. Whereas surely one should 
grow and change, be happy and sad, with 
changing and growing nature ; nor should one 
always live indoors at the centre of one's self, 
but occasionally come to the entry of being 
to meet one's friends, to take the air of exist- 
ence, to look abroad on the hills and valleys 
of universal life. One should not be uncon- 
scious of mood, in short. 

Yes, mood is necessary; mood is good and 
helpful; and anyhow it is inescapable. He 
who defies it is a rash man and far from wise. 
It is only by taking advantage of mood, of 
the mysterious, uncharted, and invisible tides 
of the spirit, that we shall ever make any 
successful ventures upon the deep sea of life, 
or bring our craft safely to port at last. 
Whether in art, or in science, or in the affairs 

275 



Wjje mn&W» of Xatttve 

of men, he who works with mood will be more 
successful than he who works without it. As 
for the mistaken man who sets himself to an 
accomplishment in defiance of his mood, time 
must teach him his own folly. He is like the 
daring and rebellious child who has never 
heard of the expression Deo volente, but pur- 
poses this or that, untempered by restriction, 
ignorant of fortune, defiant of fate. 

In old times men governed their actions by 
the stars or by auspices. They would under- 
take nothing unless the planets were propi- 
tious; and if they failed conspicuously, then 
the gods were against them, or the time in 
their horoscope had not arrived. They waited 
upon the convenient season, and sought out 
many inventions for divining it. In later years 
we have made mood a god. To-day, if I 
would invest money, or see a friend, or write 
a letter, or buy a horse, or paint a picture, I 
no longer consult a soothsayer or con the pages 
of an ephemeris; I look into my own dark 
mind and say, " Am I in the mood for it? " 

276 



2TJjt IBtMuttitvg of JWooir 

We have made mood a touchstone of action. 
Our fathers made duty their priestess. It 
may be we are straying too far from their 
honourable faith, hard and narrow and cruel 
though it could be. But that was the evil of 
extremes. We may be in peril from the oppo- 
site error, and duty is a word that is drop- 
ping out of current use. Mood has usurped 
its place. 

But there is a debauchery of mood, just as 
there is an insanity of duty. An unflinching 
observance of duty, unmodified by any other 
idea, by mercy, by love, by gentleness, by 
generosity, might readily lead to almost in- 
human hardness. The devotee of duty may 
become an unlovely and pestiferous mono- 
maniac, a burden to himself and an infliction 
to others. We all know how angular and 
sour and uncomfortable a fanatic can be. It 
matters not whether he is a religious fanatic or 
a free-thinker, his inordinate devotion to his 
one conception of life is a nuisance. He is so 



277 



8Tf)* isiusljtp of TSatur* 

stiff-necked that he cannot see anything outside 
of his own pasture. The beautiful plasticity 
of human nature at its best seems to have been 
left out of him. 

On the other hand, how much better is your 
modern watery sentimentalist? Duty for him 
is an old fabulous fetich. He maunders and 
meanders down the pavements of life, as he 
would through a rose garden. He knows no 
law but the indulgence of whim and the 
obedience to mood. He may have no strong 
evil propensities, but his flabby subservience 
to mood is a spiritual debauchery in itself. 

It is written in " The Book of St. Kavin," 
" Take heed lest ye be overtaken in debauch- 
ery of mood." And, indeed, it is a malady 
likely to attack the finest spirits. Knowing 
how essential mood is to the accomplishment 
of anything worth while, they wait upon its 
coming. Too seldom does it occur to them 
that mood is in any degree controllable. Yet 
it is so. And while we wait upon mood, we 



278 



2Tfte Mttunt^tvp of JHoolr 

must also order and direct it; for mood is 
like fire, a good servant, but an evil master. 
Have all your hopes and plans come to ground 
in a day? Has sorrow knocked at your door? 
Has circumstance foiled your most generous 
wish? Still there is this life to be lived, and 
road of fortitude to be followed. Wait not 
upon returning mood for your happiness, but 
set forward at once. Perchance then the mood 
will follow you, with sunny face. If not, still 
there is the satisfaction that your part in the 
work of the universe will not have been 
slighted. Rightly assimilated, adversity, that 
bitter tonic, may yet yield health and a smil- 
ing countenance. So at last we may attain a 
measure of nobility of character, so that mood 
will follow us like a patient sister, and we 
shall be feeble slaves of her caprice no more. 

To sorrow, to misfortune, to anger, to 
hatred, do not give way. Have, if possible, a 
sane rule of conduct, and adhere to that gladly. 
For without adherence to some line of prog- 
ress, how shall he hope for anything but drift- 

279 



ing discontent? Let us keep mood, but as a 
servant; and let us keep duty, — as a servant, 
too. For greater than either is the free spirit 
of man. 



280 



(Bf jftotierattott 



©f Motitmtion 



It is not the safety of moderation but its 
beauty and power that make it so excellent 
and so desirable a virtue. A controlled and 
regulated force is an agent that may make for 
usefulness, for good, for happiness; an un- 
controlled force can be nothing but a menace. 

At first glance we are apt to think somewhat 
slightingly of moderation. The good even 
seem somewhat tame and uninteresting in 
comparison with their more reckless and less 
responsible fellows. We are abashed at the 
presence of evil; we are horrified and con- 
fused that it should prevail; and yet we can- 
not altogether restrain a lingering tinge of 
admiration for its forceful procedure. We 
perceive that it does not restrain itself; that 

283 



it demands and often secures free play for it- 
energies; its exhibition of efficient and capa- 
ble power dazzles us. We are put out of 
conceit with respectability, and become half 
convinced that the bad is not half so bad, after 
all. We are ready to sneer at moderation. 

But we make a mistake here, we mistake a 
supine and cowardly respectability for good- 
ness. Now, respectability, mere respectability, 
is not goodness at all; it is only another form 
of weakness. The person who takes refuge 
among the respectable, without any further 
attempt to do actual good, to be actively good, 
is nothing but a poltroon, afraid to follow his 
bent. He will probably go to a worse place 
than is prepared for many a transgressor. 

But respectability is not moderation; it is 
stagnation. There is no virtue in respecta- 
bility, for virtue is an active principle, and the 
essence of respectability is dull, stupid, self- 
ish, timid inaction. If you are good you may 
be respectable ; but if you set for yourself no 
standard beyond the negative blamelessness 

284 



of being respectable you are on the highway 
to perdition. It is not goodness that fills your 
soul, but lethargy. You shudder at the crimi- 
nal classes ; you lull yourself with a cushioned 
chromo-Christianity, but your own spiritual 
and intellectual and material life is in itself 
a crime. You are an incumbrance to society, 
to say the least. 

Moderation is a very different thing. It 
is the conservation of power. It is the saving 
grace which sweetens conduct. It makes 
virtue pleasant and kindly; it makes beauty 
to be of effect in the world; it makes reason 
prevail. Moderation is the wisdom which 
never quite exhausts its reservoirs of power; 
which never permits depletion, and is, there- 
fore, never exhausted. It always has forces in 
reserve, and so triples the impression made by 
the forces it has in use. Moderation is not 
a penurious aversion to expenditure; it is a 
sane and strong disposition of power. It means 
control and efficiency. 

The logic of extremes is notoriously uncer- 
285 



2CJje liimi)iv of Mature 

tain; the beauty of extremes is even more 
doubtful. Note that in extremes you have 
energy enough to waste, spending itself in its 
last expiring effort. But beauty must always 
embody power and reserve. There is no 
beauty in exaggeration and overemphasis, nor 
in the weakness of imperfection. Beauty in 
sculpture, for instance, resides in the consum- 
mate moment; beauty in painting, in the bal- 
ance of hues. In everything beautiful, I 
think, one has the sense of exquisite modera- 
tion, a sense of poise, of expectancy, of reser- 
vation, as well as of satisfaction. One feels 
whether in music or poetry, whether in art 
or life, in contemplating beauty, that here the 
great spiritual force of the universe was 
brought into play and arrested for a moment 
in mid career. There is no strain, but only 
strength. As perfect and competent strength 
cannot know strain, so perfect beauty cannot 
know intemperance nor overstatement. Haste, 
anger, bigotry, sloth, all these destroy beauty, 
because they destroy moderation. They make 

286 



beauty in art and beauty in daily life alike 
impossible, for that one reason. They prevent 
us from living centrally and normally; they 
unhinge our poise; they cloud the mind, 
hamper the body, and make the spirit un- 
happy; they take away from us those rare 
moments of calm contentment, when the hu- 
man soul stands on the brink of exaltation, 
half-way between hope and despair. They 
rush us into one extreme or another, so that we 
cannot come into full contact with the powers 
of the universe. They make us too emphat- 
ically our single selves, — petty, wilful, and 
unwise. They drive us to extremes. If I were 
a wave, I should belong most completely 
to the great surrounding sea, when I was at 
mid height between crest and trough. So my 
own human life is most nearly in accord with 
the greater life which, it seems, must infuse 
the universe, not when I am carried beyond 
the bounds of moderation, but I am at poise, 
a normal, undistracted being. 

The idea is easily illustrated in many ways. 
287 



2TJ)t ffctustjip of Nature 

You may see many arts injured by lack of 
moderation. We build a huge opera house, 
for example, not content with a moderate size. 
What is the result? The singers must strain 
their voices to the limit, so that shading and 
all delicacy of interpretation are lost. So, 
too, in human speech. How much more con- 
vincing our conversation would be, if it were 
more moderate, — more moderate in its dic- 
tion, its vocabulary, its tones, its inflections. 
Speech is a means of expression and may be 
beautiful, comprehensive, full of delight and 
power. Too often we permit it to become 
either a mumble or a shriek. We exaggerate 
and emphasize and insist, until all truth is lost 
and all power of conviction destroyed. Our 
personal expression becomes palpably false, 
frayed and worn thin by overstress. This is 
true of all physical habit; we rush and hurry, 
or we slouch and dawdle, regardless of the fact 
that by so doing we lose all spontaneity, all 
magnetism, all power which inherently be- 
longs in beauty of motion. 

288 



&tmo&$)m 



In its secondary sense atmosphere is a word 
which is only lately come into common use. 
The artists, I suppose, have introduced it and 
given it currency. Atmosphere is to fact what 
the bloom is to the grape, — the mark of im- 
maculate perfection, imperceptible to the 
casual or careless glance, yet full of wonder 
and charm to the thoughtful observer. At- 
mosphere is the aroma of spirit, the aura or 
emanation of being; and he is a happy artist 
who has the least command of such a perish- 
able finish for his work. 

One sees so often a picture or piece of sculp- 
ture, immensely clever, apt, refined, full of 
dignity, graceful in proportion, restful in line, 
of rich and harmonious colour, the idea trans- 

291 



STfje mnui)l» of TSutuvt 

ferred to the very life, and yet one can say of 
it: "Yes, but it has no atmosphere!" And 
there is the fatal sentence pronounced. Again, 
you come upon a creation which seems upon 
scrutiny to be a tissue of faults. There is noth- 
ing right about it; bad colour, bad drawing, 
false execution, slovenly technique ; yet some- 
how, in spite of all that, even so poor a thing 
as this may tug at your sympathy; it may be 
able to cast a glamour over you for the mo- 
ment, for all its badness. It may have atmos- 
phere. True, this is unlikely, and a touch 
of atmosphere alone will not save a poor crea- 
tion. Yet, how welcome, how delightful it is! 
In people, too, as well as in facts and ob- 
jects, atmosphere counts for so much. There 
are many personalities, only too many, in 
whom it is lacking. They are excellent, even 
irreproachable, citizens, and exemplary 
friends maybe; but they are purely negative 
or neutral; they seem to be invested with not 
a particle of mysterious envelopment which 
lends glamour to the individual, and irradiates 

292 



the character. Without atmosphere there may 
be force, directness, even beauty, but the ut- 
most reach of power will be wanting. The 
hard light of character needs to be somewhat 
diffused and tempered by an atmospheric 
quality in its expression. And since expres- 
sion is a matter of art, one is almost tempted 
to say that art consists in the creation of atmos- 
phere. Be as faithful to reality (or to ro- 
mance) as you please, but surround your 
transcription with an atmosphere; bestow 
upon it the magic air and colour which are 
its own indeed, but which shall still convince 
and transport us beyond the actual. 

" The little more, and how much it is ; 
The little less, and what worlds away." 

In matters of art it is " the little more " 
which is so all important; and the absolute 
reproduction of an incident or an object, if 
such a feat were possible, would mean some- 
thing very like failure. 

Also the painter is in danger of seeing too 
293 



art)* liimi)i# of ISfatttre 

much. He half closes his eyes for fear of 
seeing things exactly as they are. He would 
preserve the charm of atmosphere at all costs. 
He must either add something of his own to 
the canvas, or omit the minuteness of detail 
in his rendering of a subject, in order to ar- 
rest the air and the illusion of nature. But 
at all hazards he will avoid what science 
would count the truth. Your line must have 
just sufficient indecision to betray (I should 
say, to reveal) the human hand that drew it. 
For this is the touch of living sympathy, more 
important than the dead accuracy of the ma- 
chine. To transfer to canvas or print some- 
thing of the vitality of the original is the first 
concern of the craftsman, the more nearly 
exact the better, but living at all costs. We 
are apt to forget that the circle and the straight 
line are mathematical fictions, forms of speech 
which have been approached but never real- 
ized in a material world. For to apprehend 
absolute perfection is not given to man, though 
he be a prince of artists; while ever to strive 

294 



after that apprehension is one of his most 
delightful joys. The pursuit of the unattain- 
able is the piety of art. 

To create an atmosphere, to produce an 
illusion, having been always the artist's prime 
aim and most elementary need, it follows that 
in every art there have been evolved its own 
peculiar laws which facilitate and enforce 
that object. In poetry, for instance, versifica- 
tion, with all its complex beauty of rhythms 
and metres, helps to enshroud tfie theme with 
atmosphere. I had almost said that versifica- 
tion provides the atmosphere. For although 
it is so easy to be hopelessly banal in verse, 
there must still cling even to the worst poetry 
some of the inalienable charm of numbers. A 
foreigner at least might hear it with satisfac- 
tion. 

So that if a man will abandon verse, and 
betake himself, as he fondly says, to the free- 
dom of prose, he will find the burden of art 
laid upon him more than twice as heavy as 



295 



before. He is cast utterly upon his own re- 
sources, and yet the obligations of his art are 
not diminished one jot. There is the same old 
tale of illusion and atmosphere to be made up, 
and not a shred of material in stock. One 
thinks of prose as the simplest, most natural 
means of expression, and of poetry as laboured 
in comparison. I fancy, however, that if we 
could interrogate those who have been masters 
of both arts, we should find the reverse to be 
true. " Prose is toil," they would say, " while 
poetry is play." 

At all events, there is atmosphere in form; 
and it is the engrossing business of the artist 
to manipulate his form, to humour it, to coax 
it, to compel it, to woo it, so as to make it yield 
the greatest possible amount of atmosphere for 
his purpose. In all this he must take care 
to call to his aid every available resource of 
his craft. In the first place he must enlist the 
sympathetic help of words by using them 
kindly and rightly according to their nature 



296 



and genius, and as they belong, and not antag- 
onize them by misapplication. I have known 
writers who established a reputation for great 
cleverness simply by the misuse of words. 
Their style was called original. It was. For 
pure unmitigated cruelty to our tiny, long- 
suffering servants, these patient words, it was 
unmatched. Now a man who will mutilate 
his mother tongue merely to display his own 
agility is no better than a heathen. It is so 
needless, too. For to the generous and sedu- 
lous master, what revelations of undreamed 
beauty, what marvels of import, will not words 
impart? 

I would not speak as a pedant, nor as a 
dilettante, on this topic, but only as a sober 
bystander in this great gallery of art, this 
lovely world which we are permitted to 
wander through. I see how much things are 
enhanced in my eyes by the atmosphere that 
surrounds them ; I see how naked and poverty- 
stricken they appear without it; and I say to 
myself, " I love atmosphere, in art and in life. 

297 



I will surround myself with it, whenever I 
can do so unselfishly. And if I were an artist 
of any sort, it is atmosphere that I should seek 
first of all." 



THE END. 



298 



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